Elizabeth Warren Wants Meta to Spill All on Stablecoin Plans Ahead of Clarity Act Votes

In brief

• Elizabeth Warren pushed Meta to fully reveal its stablecoin plans before the Senate votes on the Clarity Act.
• Warren warned Meta’s push into stablecoin payments could affect "competition, privacy... and financial stability."
• The senator asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain Meta’s stablecoin plans and partnerships by May 20.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) urged Meta this week to fully disclose its stablecoin-related ambitions, arguing that the tech giant must reveal the plans before lawmakers vote on a major crypto-related bill currently pending in the Senate.

“It is essential that Congress fully understand the implications of Meta’s stablecoin integration plans as it considers legislation to structure the cryptocurrency market,” Warren said in a letter sent to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg this week.

Warren is the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Banking Committee, which, after months of delays, may soon finally hold a vote on the Clarity Act—a bill that would formally legalize most crypto-related activity in the United States.

Meta, which owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger, rolled out a program last month to pay out creators in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. The rollout followed a February CoinDesk report revealing the company’s plan to integrate a third-party stablecoin for in-app payments across its platforms in the second half of this year.

Following the launch of its USDC creator payout program, Meta emphasized it is not issuing its own stablecoin.

Meta previously attempted to issue its own stablecoin, Libra, in 2019, but abandoned the effort after Congress pushed back on the notion of such a large corporation creating its own private currency.

However, in the aftermath of last year’s passage of the GENIUS Act—a bill legalizing the issuance of stablecoins in the United States—Meta has begun revisiting the financial technology.

“The lack of transparency regarding the details of Meta’s stablecoin-related plans is deeply troubling,” Warren scolded Zuckerberg in Wednesday’s letter.

The senator contended that, given Meta’s 3.5 billion worldwide users, any decision on the company’s part to favor one stablecoin product over another “could have serious implications for competition, privacy, the integrity of our payments system, and financial stability.”

Last spring, Warren and another senator, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), asked Meta to disclose whether it planned to adopt stablecoins or not. A company executive replied only that “we currently have no plans to issue a stablecoin in the future”—but did not elaborate about any potential arrangements with third-parties.

Warren has now asked the tech giant to inform her, by May 20, of the nature of its experiments with third-party stablecoin issuers. She has also asked Meta to detail if it plans to prefer such a stablecoin over other payment options, what privacy guardrails it would put on the currency, and any financial arrangements between the company and a stablecoin issuer, among other questions.

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