Facebook's Libra 2020 launch plan still unclear: board member

By Tom Wilson

LONDON (Reuters) – Facebook’s Libra project has no solid strategy yet for how or where it will be introduced next year, a board member of the body overseeing the hotly-anticipated cryptocurrency told Reuters on Thursday.

The scope of the roll-out for Libra, due to launch in June, depends on talks with regulators, said Patrick Ellis, one of five board members for the Geneva-based Libra Association that will issue and govern the digital currency.

“At this stage, there is no strategy set in stone for the markets or the product, or how it will actually get rolled out,” Ellis said in a phone interview from Singapore.

The prospect of Libra being used by Facebook’s <FB.O> nearly 2.4 billion users has drawn scrutiny from authorities around the world, nervous it could alter the global financial landscape.

Libra was unveiled by Facebook in June. Officials running the project, including its head, have said regulatory hurdles could see the launch delayed.

“It’s just too early to put a solid strategy in place,” Ellis said. “We have still got so much to solve with the regulators in order to be able to then refine the strategy for launch.”

U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard launched the latest broadside against Libra on Wednesday, saying it faced a “core set of legal and regulatory challenges” and that its concept “stablecoin” remained unproven.

(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Marc Jones and Edmund Blair)