Social media giant Facebook has apparently formed a new financial tech firm, Libra Networks LLC, according to a filing on the Geneva Commercial Register.
ZURICH (Reuters) – Facebook has set up a new financial technology company in Switzerland focusing on blockchain and payments as well as data analytics and investing, Geneva’s commercial register shows.
Libra Networks was registered in Geneva on May 2 by Facebook Global Holdings II LLC. Per the official filing the firm provides:
“…services in the fields of finance and technology, as well as the development and production of software and related infrastructure, in particular in connection with investment activities, the operation of payments, financing, identity management, data analysis, big data, blockchain and other technologies.”
Facebook registered the trademark “Libra” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office back in June, which was reportedly part of its secretretive in-house crypto project. Facebook has also hired two cryptocurrency compliance experts who formerly worked at the major crypto exchange Coinbase as reported by Cointelegraph in May.
Anonymous sources have claimed that Facebook could release a native stablecoin some time in the third quarter of 2019.
At the recent crypto conference Consensus 2019, Polychain Capital CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee commented that he thinks the rumored stablecoin should be built on a public, open source infrastructure. Carlson-Wee thinks it would be in the self-interest of the company given recent controversies surrounding the social media platform:
“I think given all the problems that Facebook has had with policing their platform and things like that, I think that the strategic move for Facebook would actually be to build public infrastructure. And that public infrastructure could be incorporated onto all the Facebook platforms, which of course are proprietary. But that public infrastructure, if they don’t try to own it, I think that’s where they will have the most success.”
Libra Networks, with Facebook Global Holdings as stakeholder, was registered in Geneva on May 2 to provide financial and technology services and develop related hardware and software, plans submitted on the Swiss register reveal.
The owner of WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than 1 billion people, has been at the center of public and regulatory scrutiny over misuse of consumers’ personal data..
