According to a report by Cointelegraph, the US House Financial Services Committee is pressuring social media giant Meta to disclose any blockchain or cryptocurrency-related projects. This comes as the company has had five trademark applications related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain pending since 2022.
In a letter to Meta’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Javier Olivan on January 22, senior committee member Maxine Waters stated that these trademark applications, submitted on March 18, 2022, “seem to represent the company’s continued intent to expand its involvement in the digital asset ecosystem.”
Waters mentioned that despite Meta telling Democratic members of the Financial Services Committee on October 12, 2023, that “Meta is not engaged in ongoing digital asset work,” these applications indicate that Meta is indeed involved in digital asset work.
Reportedly, these trademark applications involve various services related to cryptocurrency and “blockchain assets,” including trading, exchange, payment, transfer, wallets, and related hardware and software infrastructure. Notices of allowance (NOA), which are documents indicating that an application meets registration requirements, have been sent to Meta for each application. The company must submit a statement within six months to indicate its intention to use the trademark or request a six-month extension for submitting the statement.
Meta has until February 15 to respond to the first NOA issued on August 15, 2023. The latest NOA was sent on January 16, meaning the company must respond by July 16.
Waters inquired about how Meta plans to respond to the NOAs, whether they intend to pursue any Web3, cryptocurrency, or digital wallet projects, and if they will launch a cryptocurrency payment platform. She also asked about Meta’s research on stablecoins and collaboration with stablecoin projects, whether they are seeking to adopt distributed ledger technology (DLT), and how their technology enables cryptocurrency-related functionalities in the metaverse.
