Warren Goes At Meta Over Stablecoin Pilot

Warren Demands Answers on Meta's Crypto Payments Rollout

Senator Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) has written to @Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, calling the company's "lack of transparency" around its stablecoin activity "troubling." The letter follows Meta's quiet launch of $USDC stablecoin payouts for select Facebook creators in Colombia and the Philippines late last month.

Warren argued that given Meta's massive global user base, any stablecoin activity on the platform could have "serious implications for competition, privacy, the integrity of our payments system, and financial stability."

Meta has begun rolling out stablecoin payouts to select creators, allowing them to receive earnings in $USDC on the Solana or Polygon blockchains. The program, supported by payments firm Stripe, lets eligible users link a crypto wallet and generates tax documents from both Meta and Stripe tied to creators' earnings and digital asset transactions. Meta is not issuing its own token. It is relying on $USDC, a regulated stablecoin issued by Circle, to sidestep the friction that sank Diem.

A Meta spokesperson was direct in response: "There is no Meta stablecoin. We have also told Sen. Warren we want people and businesses to be able to pay the way they want on our platforms, which may include through third-party stablecoin," the spokesperson told Fortune.

History Repeating: From Libra to USDC

The confrontation between Warren and Zuckerberg over crypto is not new. In 2019, the company (then named Facebook) announced plans to roll out a stablecoin named Libra, later changing the project's name to Diem following a wave of backlash. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was brought before the House Financial Services Committee that year to defend the company's crypto plans, at which point he was already locking horns with Warren, who advocated breaking up Big Tech companies. By 2022, the company shuttered the effort amid unrelenting regulatory pressure.

In a prior 2025 letter, Warren had cited $USDC itself as potentially risky, pointing out that the token lost its dollar peg and traded as low as $0.88 during the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in 2023. That the same stablecoin is now at the centre of Meta's payments pilot adds a pointed layer to the current dispute.

The timing is politically significant. The letter comes as Warren's Senate committee appears to be making progress on the CLARITY Act, a bill creating a regulatory framework for crypto. Warren sits as ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, while Chairman Tim Scott is pushing to bring the bill to markup this month, putting both senators at the same negotiating table.

Meta plans to expand stablecoin payouts globally throughout 2026, potentially reaching billions of users across its platforms , a scale that makes the regulatory stakes considerably higher than the current two-country pilot suggests.

Sources:
Fortune: Elizabeth Warren seeks information on Meta's latest stablecoin plans in letter to Mark Zuckerberg
CoinDesk: Meta starts stablecoin payout to creators in Circle's USDC on Polygon, Solana via Stripe
Fortune: Meta quietly rolls out stablecoin payments in Colombia and Philippines