The sine qua non condition for launching stable cryptocurrencies, like Facebook's Libra project, is "a solid legal basis," recommends a report sent Thursday to G7 member countries meeting in Washington. This report, drawn up under the leadership of the member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, Benoît Coeuré, does not at any time mention the Libra that the social network wants to launch in 2020. But it was commissioned in July at the previous G7 Finance in France, shortly after Facebook's project was announced. The ministers then sounded the alarm on the potential risks of these digital currencies such as tax evasion or the financing of terrorism. "For developers of stable currency", i.e. backed by a basket of currencies such as the dollar or the euro to ensure stability, "a solid legal basis in all relevant jurisdictions (...) is an absolute prerequisite", write the authors of the report. In addition, they encourage central banks and ministries in particular "to develop roadmaps to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of payments and financial services". Because "overall, cross-border payments remain slow, expensive and opaque, especially for retail payments such as remittances," they note. In addition, 1.7 billion people worldwide have little or no access to financial services, which explains the emergence of digital currencies. The digital currency must therefore offer an alternative payment method to traditional banking circuits that are not always efficient. But many regulators and governments have been pointing out for months many risks including the bad reputation of the American group in terms of privacy and protection of personal data. The size of Facebook, the world's leading social network with 2.7 billion users (including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger...), also implies that the new currency could disrupt the global financial system and make it more difficult for central banks, recently observed the chairman of the US central bank Jerome Powell. In addition to the risks of tax evasion and terrorist financing, there is a "systemic risk", according to the report submitted to the G7. States and central banks also fear losing their sovereignty: they are for the moment the only ones to have the right to mint money. - Allow Libra or not? The France, which chairs the G7 this year, plans to issue a statement at the end of the meeting, a source familiar with the matter told AFP. Last month, its Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire did not hesitate to vote for a ban on the "development of Libra on European soil". On Thursday, he returned to the charge in an op-ed published in the Financial Times claiming that Faceboook's cryptocurrency posed "a threat to the sovereignty of states."

Yves Mersch, a member of the ECB's Executive Board, also recently said that Libra could harm the eurozone's monetary policy and the single currency. In the United States, Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed's executive board, in a speech on digital currencies in Washington, drew up a long list of regulatory challenges facing issuers of digital currencies on Wednesday. The G7 Finance meeting and Brainard's statements came a week before Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg testified before a House finance committee on Oct. 23. Mr. Zuckerberg was already in Washington on Thursday to participate in discussions on freedom of expression. For its part, China, which is not part of the G7 and which decided two years ago to put cryptocurrencies on the index, is accelerating preparations for its own virtual currency. The Libra association, which must manage the future virtual currency desired by Facebook, was officially launched on Monday by 21 founding members in Geneva including PayU, telecommunications groups Vodafone and Iliad, the platforms Uber and Spotify, blockchain players such as Anchorage or Coinbase, venture capital funds like Andreessen Horowitz or non-profit organizations like Kiva. However, the project has recently been weakened by the defection of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard or eBay.