New Bill Would Put Facebook's Libra Stablecoin Under US Securities Law

American lawmakers have reportedly introduced a bill aiming to put Facebook's Libra under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Two Texas representatives, Sylvia Garcia and Lance Gooden, have proposed legislation that would put even more regulatory scrutiny on Facebook's not-yet-launched Libra stablecoin and related projects, CNBC reports Nov. 21.

The bipartisan team of the House Financial Services Committee introduced the bill today, speaking at a committee hearing on the role of big data in financial services.

Libra is "Clearly" a security under existing law, lawmaker claims.

The new bill is necessary to protect U.S. consumers, Gooden says.

"In what are called 'managed stablecoins', we have trusted brands marketing digital assets to consumers as secure and stable Everyday investors need to know they can trust the issuers behind their financial assets. This bill would bring them the security they deserve by applying the laws we use to regulate financial securities to this new breed of digital currencies."

Facebook Calibra exec previously said that Libra is a commodity.

Libra backers deny that the stablecoin is a security.

In a hearing with the House Financial Services Committee in July 2019, the head of Facebook's native crypto wallet service Calibra stated that he does not consider Libra a security or exchange-traded fund, stating that it could be possibly treated as a commodity.

The SEC recently declared that Telegram's $1.7 billion Gram token sale in 2018 was illegal, arguing that those tokens are securities.