Libra Association To Appoint Board This Month

Facebook’s Libra Association is meeting with member firms on Oct. 14 in Switzerland, CNBC reported on Wednesday (Oct. 2).

Companies involved with the cryptocurrency project are sending representatives to the meeting, where it is expected a board of directors will be appointed for the Libra Association.

Founding Libra member Farfetch told CNBC it would be attending the meeting. The luxury eCommerce firm said the Geneva meeting has been in the works for “some time.”

Of Libra’s 28 founding members, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Stripe Inc. are undecided about formally signing onto Libra’s organizing charter due to concerns about maintaining positive relationships with regulators who have reservations about the project, Bloomberg reported.

Libra – a blockchain-backed cryptocurrency – aims to connect the 1.7 billion people around the world without access to a bank account to the world of digital payments at low or no cost.

The Libra Association is a Geneva-based nonprofit made up of more than two dozen companies tasked with overseeing the new digital currency.

Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, PayU, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Capital, Coinbase, Xapo, eBay, Uber, Lyft, Farfetch, Mercado Pago, Spotify and Vodafone are just a short sampling of the 28 founding members of the Libra Association, which will collectively develop the charter for the organization and frame its governance structure.

Member firms will also kick in the capital to support the project – $10 million apiece – with some exceptions. Payment (technically, the purchase of $10 million in Libra tokens) obtains founding membership and the voting rights associated with it. Facebook has confirmed it will have no more standing in the association than any other founding members, though its engineers are building the blockchain rails on which the system will ride.

To ward off the currency speculators that tend to plague high-profile crypto projects like bitcoin, Libra will be a stablecoin, with its value pegged to the U.S. dollar.