David Weild IV, who is known as the father of the JOBS Act, believes that the U.S. government had to move to stamp out Facebook’s Libra stablecoin. Facebook: Number of Active Users. Source: Statista. ‘Government’s got to do something’ In an interview with Cointelegraph, Weild said that when he first heard about Zuckerberg’s initiative, he knew right away that the government needed to step in: “When I heard what Zuckerberg was going to do (and this was before the government clamped down), I said ‘the government’s got to do something here.’ And it was picked up by the House Financial …

WhatsApp has premiered fiat electronic payments on its platform, with Brazil becoming the first country to experience a nationwide release. According to a statement released Monday by WhatsApp, users that have Visa and Mastercard debit or credit cards from Banco do Brasil, Nubank or Sicredi can now attach instant payments to their messages. There’s an unspecified monetary limit imposed due to Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism concerns. Additionally, WhatsApp users in Brazil cannot make more than 20 in-app transactions per day. WhatsApp is reported to have over 120 million users in Brazil, or roughly 57% of the …

EOS-based blockchain platform Telos has announced a partnership with virtual card provider All_EBT to scale the firm’s service for food assistance programs. The partnership will see Telos’ blockchain used to facilitate payments between All_EBT’s stakeholders in food assistance and public welfare. All_EBT is backed by Draper Associates, EOS, and Facebook, and allows recipients of electronic benefit transfers — or EBT — to spend those benefits online. The firm's website currently prompts users to join a waitlist. The firm previously won hackathons organized by Facebook and Y Combinator, and received the EOSIO Hackathon’s social impact award in 2018. All_EBT also provides …

The proposed Libra cryptocurrency will allow Facebook to increase ad prices, the social network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, according to a transcript provided to Cointelegraph by the Novi press team. At the event, Zuckerberg was asked how Facebook plans to profit from integrating Libra into its services. The social network CEO replied by saying that Libra will make commerce more beneficial for businesses, and thereby increase ad revenue. Last year, Facebook earned around $69.6 billion from selling ads, which constituted more than 98% of their total income in 2019. Zuckerberg said: "When they …

Facebook-owned digital wallet Calibra rebranded itself as Novi earlier today, sharing new details about the project. The primary reason for the name change was to avoid the confusion with the Libra cryptocurrency, a representative for Novi told Cointelegraph. “When we announced Libra and Calibra last June, we wanted to demonstrate that Calibra, the digital wallet, was closely linked to Libra, the global payment system. Both brands were born out of the same vision, to give people more access to the global economy. However, we’ve found that Calibra and Libra sounded too similar and people were getting confused, so we set …

Following a big-time update to its white paper in mid-April, the Libra Association has over the past couple of weeks made a string of striking new additions to its core governance team, including appointing Robert Werner as its general counsel and Stuart Levey as its CEO. Before joining the Libra Association, Werner served as the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, as well as holding a number of top leadership positions at financial firms such as HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Similarly, Levey most recently was the chief legal officer for HSBC Holdings. In addition, …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s vigor in pursuing initial coin offerings, or ICOs, has become a major boogeyman within the crypto community. Most recently, the case against Telegram ended with that company abandoning its planned open network and Gram tokens, which raised $1.7 billion. The question before the crypto community is now: Have we witnessed the death of the ICO? The answer is yes, in that, with all due fear of predictions, we will never see the likes of 2017’s ICO boom again. That vision of an ICO is indeed dead. This is not the end for new …

On May 19, the Libra Association, the organization behind Facebook’s Libra stablecoin project, announced the appointment of Robert Werner as its general counsel, in what seems to be a continuing strategy to reconcile with regulators. Werner brings vast experience from both the public and private sectors, including serving as the director for the Finance Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and overseeing both HSBC and Goldman Sachs’ enterprise executive for policy and regulations. Former FinCEN head joins Libra In its latest high-profile appointment, Robert Werner has been announced as general counsel to the Libra Association. Werner is also the founder and former …

Dr. Steven Waterhouse, a founding partner of Pantera Capital and the CEO of Orchid (OXT), believes that the U.S. government will not let a private enterprise challenge the dollar. In an interview recorded prior to Telegram announcing it had given up on its blockchain project, Dr. Waterhouse said the U.S. government perceives cryptocurrencies issued by companies with hundreds of millions of users as a real threat to the dollar: “The idea that some random startups are going to build their own stablecoins, perhaps with hundreds of millions of installs of a messenger client, whether it's Facebook or Telegram or someone …

May 6, the Libra Association announced the appointment of Obama’s former under secretary for terrorism as its first CEO. Stuart Levey served as an under secretary for terrorism under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focusing on the enforcement of all U.S. anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing laws by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). In his most recent position, he served as the chief legal officer at HSBC. Levey’s appointment continues a trend of Libra trying to make peace with regulators. Bipartisan support The press release quotes Katie Haun, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and …

In a recent presentation at the 3rd ZKProof Workshop, the Calibra research team presented Distributed Auditing Proofs of Liabilities, or DAPOL, protocol designed to make improvements to the existing distributed audit procedures. The team led by Konstantinos Chalkias, contends that their protocol builds upon and improves existing methods by introducing additional optimization and enhanced privacy. It allows entities to undergo a distributed audit of their liabilities and it works in any situation where an entity does not have a motivation to overstate its liabilities. The latter is the reason why DAPOL cannot be used to audit assets. For example, a …

Cointelegraph conducted an exclusive interview with Binance founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, during Virtual Blockchain Week. During the discussion, CZ addressed concerns from the crypto community regarding the size and influence of Binance amid the firm’s increasing acquisitions and horizontal expansions. CZ: ‘the free market works’ On the topic of Binance’s increasing presence within the crypto ecosystem, CZ stated: “I think basically there's two sides to it.” “So there’s the worry about are we too big or not, and then there is why are users choosing us? If we abuse the power that we have, and then …