On Monday afternoon, the Libra Association was constituted with 21 partners. They were all physically present at the first annual meeting in Geneva. They also appointed the board of directors and the top management.
The board of directors now consists of:
- David Marcus, CEO Calibra
- Katie Haun, partner of Andreessen Horowitz
- Wences Cerares, CEO of Xapo
- Patrick Ellis, General Counsel at PayU
- Matthew Davie, Chief Strategy Officer of Kiva
The announcement that Libra is now constituted comes in the wake of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, eBay and Stripe withdrawing from the collaboration. Strong criticism has been leveled at the US authorities by Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, who accuses two senators of threatening payment intermediaries to withdraw for not being punished with the investigation. Whatever the reason, the common denominator for those who have withdrawn is that they are regulated by the SEC because they are payment intermediaries.
In the Libra press release, they make it clear that over 1,500 companies have applied to become members of the Libra Association. According to the organization, only 180 members meet the strict criteria for joining, while a two-thirds majority of members is needed to accept new companies in the organization. The plan is to launch Libra into the market when 100 companies are accepted and actively participate by running their own nodes that verify transactions.
Today’s 21 members are:
- Uber
- Lyft
- Coinbase
- Spotify
- PayU
- Vodafone
- Andreessen Horowitz
- Union Square Ventures
- Xapo
- Kiva
- Bison Trails
- Creative Destruction Labs
- Thrive Capital
- Breakthrough Initiatives
- Illiad
- Farfetch
- Mercy Corps
- Women’s World Banking
- Anchorage