8 months ago
Congresswoman Maxine Waters, ranking subordinate of the Financial Services Committee, has initiated an probe into Meta’s engagement with integer assets implicit fiscal stableness concerns.
Waters wrote a letter to apical Meta executives Mark Zuckerberg and Javier Olivan connected Jan. 22, highlighting a bid of trademark applications that suggest a imaginable enlargement into integer currency and blockchain technology, raising questions astir the company’s intentions and activities successful this domain.
She has requested clarification connected Meta’s intentions regarding web3, integer wallets, and different related projects. These inquiries purpose to ascertain the grade of Meta’s ongoing and aboriginal engagement successful integer assets, including immoderate imaginable probe and improvement successful stablecoin projects oregon partnerships with different stablecoin issuers.
Waters has agelong been a professional of the crypto manufacture and believes that the assemblage should beryllium taxable to the aforesaid stringent regulations arsenic banks, particularly stablecoin issuers.
Trademark applications
The 5 trademark applications — filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) successful 2022 — screen a wide array of services related to integer assets. The applications encompass a divers scope of services, from online societal networking and dating services tailored for investors to downloadable bundle for integer currency management.
The applications besides see provisions for assorted integer plus activities ranging from fiscal trades and exchanges of assorted forms of integer currency to the plan and improvement of blockchain-related machine hardware and software.
The submissions person raised concerns, peculiarly fixed Meta’s past ventures into integer currency and the consequent regulatory and nationalist scrutiny.
Despite these filings, Meta unit asserted successful October 2023 that the institution is neither conducting nor readying immoderate enactment connected blockchain-based products oregon stablecoins. However, the connection contradicts the elaborate descriptions successful Meta’s trademark applications.
Letter requests
The USPTO process requires that, pursuing the issuance of a Notice of Allowance (NOA), applicants indispensable record a Statement of Use oregon an Extension Request wrong six months. This process is important for maintaining the validity of the trademark exertion and its associated goods and services.
Waters questioned whether Meta would record a Statement of Use oregon an Extension Request for their caller trademark applications and sought details connected the grade of Meta’s probe and improvement successful stablecoin projects, partnerships, and the adoption of distributed ledger exertion successful its platforms.
Additionally, she asked if Meta intends to motorboat a cryptocurrency payments level and however its exertion facilitates assorted aspects of cryptocurrency handling, peculiarly successful its Metaverse platform.
Waters’ missive pointed to Meta’s past endeavors successful the integer currency realm, peculiarly the improvement of the Libra (later rebranded arsenic Diem) cryptocurrency project, arsenic an denotation of the company’s integer plus ambitions.
The Libra/Diem task was met with important absorption from regulators and policymakers owed to concerns astir privacy, nationalist security, and the imaginable interaction connected planetary fiscal systems. Meta yet sold it disconnected amid the backlash.
Meta’s effect to these inquiries volition beryllium intimately watched, arsenic it could importantly interaction the regulatory scenery surrounding integer currencies and blockchain technology. The company’s actions and strategies successful this evolving tract stay a constituent of keen involvement and scrutiny among policymakers and manufacture observers.
The station US lawmaker probing Meta’s engagement with integer assets, blockchain tech appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.
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