The Facebook CEO on Wednesday defended his digital currency project before elected officials in the US Lower House, who fear competition that is harmful to the supremacy of the dollar. He has pledged not to launch anything until they have the green light. Is Libra Dead? Attacked from all sides, the social network's digital currency project, initially scheduled for launch in mid-2020, was on the menu on Wednesday for a tough hearing from the CEO of Facebook before the Finance Committee of the American House of Representatives. A wrestling match in a suit during which Mark Zuckerberg, now experienced in the exercise, bent and multiplied the concessions but without breaking on the merits in the face of the adversity of elected officials, in particular Democrats. “Our goal is to build a payment system, more than to create a currency. Since we imagine it global, we thought it would be best to back it with a cryptocurrency.” In short, a way to send money between "friends", as easy and natural as writing an SMS, and not at all "an attempt to create a sovereign currency". Read also "It would be dangerous to leave Facebook to go it alone" A presentation could not be more low profile of a virtual currency already nicknamed by some "ZuckBuck" across the Atlantic - pun with buck, "dollar" in slang - and whose simple announcement had the effect of unleashing a cybermonetary storm, even before the slightest libra was issued. Anxious to calm things down and well aware that the social network "is not the ideal messenger at the moment", the one who considers himself a "capitalist" admitted to having "not yet locked in exactly how it was going to work". He has pledged not to launch anything “anywhere in the world” before getting the green light from US regulators and even to remove Facebook from the Libra Foundation if it appears that they “cannot arrive. not to continue in accordance with the principles that [he] established". Patriotic But not enough to completely draw a line under a project which, for the 1.7 billion unbanked people, including 14 million in the United States, could make it possible to instantly transfer money to the other side of the planet free. "You're probably not going to believe me, rebounded Zuckerberg to the question of an elected Republican on the genesis of libra, but the way we can make money is not the first thing we talk about when we let's discuss a new project." So why would the libra project be so important to Facebook, which is not only known for its philanthropy? In the wake of David Marcus, leader of the project and former leader of Paypal who took the habit of presenting the libra as "the currency of the free world", Zuckerberg did not hesitate to play the patriotic fiber to the fullest. An argument that has hit home with some elected Republicans, such as when the 35-year-old CEO said that Libra is “good for our national security” and “will extend our democratic values and our control around the world”. At a time when China, which has already warned that it would ban it on its soil, is busy on its future cryptoyuan - "Once launched, Facebook's libra will be unstoppable", recently explained its manager, Changchun Mu -, definitively blocking the project would endanger the dollar and American leadership in finance. "The Chinese are our biggest competitors and the United States is taking a risk by not innovating," pointed out Zuckerberg, recalling that Beijing had precisely chosen a public-private partnership to launch its own digital currency, "that they are determined to export to the world". To date, the yuan represents only 2% of payments worldwide. "The alternative is not Zuckerberg or Xi Jinping," reframed Democrat Vicente Gonzalez after the Facebook boss admitted to realizing "that going to China could prevent American companies from defending the values of our country. ". And to those who reproach him for undermining the supremacy of the dollar by having chosen to back his cybercurrency with a mixed basket of major currencies, including the euro and the yen, Zuckerberg said he was in favor of this reserve of the order of 200 billion dollars (180 billion euros) contains more than 50% of greenbacks, and even open to the “option” 100%. Ambitions At this stage, it went without saying that the launch of the project, which 7 of the 21 initial partners have so far given up on, including the payment sector sureties Visa and Mastercard, would most likely be delayed. If Libra is not officially dead on Wednesday in the US Congress, it may be a long wait. At least the time that the States, awakened by the ambitions of Facebook, wipe the plaster with their own cryptocurrency.