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by salawat 2446 days ago
>The letter directly threatens malicious investigation

Interesting word choice there. I saw nothing malicious in the statement that moving forward would result in elevated regulatory pressure. That is a regulator's job. If Libra took off, but could not be monitored through the existing regulatory infrastructure, then those organizations must do more to make up the lost ground to meet their mandate.

So malice doesn't really come into it.
1 comments
slededit 2446 days ago
Regulators should not pressure a companies unrelated business lines to effect change elsewhere. If the company is doing something illegal then target that specific activity.
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salawat 2446 days ago
The implication in the letter is "if you go forward with Libra, then scrutiny will increase." Which again, makes sense, because previous safeguards (KYC and AML) would have to be updated to reflect the realities represented by financial transactions in Libra.

The financial system is regulated through high barrier entrance controls, and various levels of traffic pattern analysis through AML laws. Libra threatens to blow a hole in that for some period of time while the tools and processes are updated. Therefore... More scrutiny.

It isn't a conspiracy. It's just how things work in strictly regulated industries. Although usually, it isn't such a big deal that Congresspeople get directly involved through constituent outcry, and it is left to the Executive agencies to do the back and forth with the industry to ensure things go without a hitch.

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dcole2929 2446 days ago
Yeah I don't think that line of reasoning follows. More scrutiny, is more scrutiny. Especially when you're talking about financial transactions. If I'm looking for A and notice that thing B is illegal I'm not going to not investigate it simply because it wasn't my mandate. That's literally how the US Government eventually got Al Capone. Every agency in the country looking at him and he goes away for Tax Evasion.

It also should be obvious but something like Libra could easily affect other lines of business for a company and so those other things that don't necessarily deal directly with Libra would require monitoring as well. It's not a threat, it's just a fact of what (imo very warranted) enhanced regulatory attention risks.

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