Meta abandoned crypto in 2022. Maxine Waters wants to know why the company is still filing patents for it

“With its preliminary filings on March 18, 2022, Meta’s application submissions since January 22 appear to represent an ongoing objective to broaden the business’s participation in the digital properties community,” checks out the letter sent out on Jan. 22.

Does the business have a brand-new prepare for crypto? Meta didn’t right away react to an ask for remark from Fortune

In the previous year, Meta has actually sent 5 applications for hallmarks associated with cryptocurrency or blockchain. Waters indicated that these hallmarks oppose interactions in between the Democratic Financial Services committee and Meta personnel. According to her letter, agents of Meta specified that the business is not pursuing any advancements connected to digital properties or the blockchain. The congresswoman now looks for explanation.

This is not the very first time that Waters, the ranking member of your house Committee on Financial Services, has actually encountered executives at Meta, previously FacebookIn June 2019, the business revealed strategies to produce a stablecoin– a cryptocurrency that’s generally connected to a reserve, such as the U.S. dollar– and a wallet service, initially called Libra and Calibra, respectively.

“With the statement that it prepares to develop a cryptocurrency, Facebook is continuing its untreated growth and extending its reach into the lives of its users,” Waters stated in a 2019 declaration“The cryptocurrency market presently does not have a clear regulative structure to offer strong defenses for financiers, customers, and the economy.”

Meta created ahead, later on rebranding the job as Diem, picking Switzerland for the head office of Diem Association, the business that handled the coin. Waters, for her part, continued to keep an eye on the advancement, holding congressional hearings and even flying to Switzerland to consult with federal government authorities.

Waters wasn’t alone in checking out Diem or, for that matter, stablecoins, for which the U.S. still has no clear legislation. A November 2021 report provided by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency consisted of issues about such a concentration of power in one business that’s producing both the stablecoin and its associated wallet.

“This mix might have destructive results on competitors and result in market concentration in sectors of the genuine economy,” the report stated“A stablecoin that ends up being extensively embraced as a method of payment might provide issues about anti-competitive results.”

The Diem Association had actually pursued more than 2 years to discover a feasible course with regulators both in the U.S. and abroad, however practically 3 months after that report came out, the company foldedAll properties and copyright were gotten by Silvergate, a California-based bank that supplies crypto-related services.

After revealing completion of operations, Diem CEO Stuart Levey argued that the business had actually gotten blended messages from regulators. In a declaration, Diem firmly insisted that regulators saw the stablecoin job as ingenious and properly designed, arguing that modifications were executed in accordance with regulators’ issues.

“Despite providing us favorable substantive feedback on the style of the network,” Levey stated in January 2022, “it nonetheless ended up being clear from our discussion with federal regulators that the job might stagnate ahead.”