After a rocky road with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, key decision-makers at Libra have gone back to the drawing board to re-tool their cryptocurrency platform to be more palatable to regulators. First of all, Libra has applied for a payment system license from Swiss regulator FINMA (Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority). This is a huge milestone on the way to some publicly usable Libra payments system, but there is still work to be done. Libra’s licensing process will continue to require input from other central banks and financial regulatory authorities around the world. But the traction is …

Economist and academic John Vaz believes Bitcoin (BTC) still faces stiff competition from Facebook’s troubled Libra project. Vaz told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin has scaling challenges in terms of payments and was used disproportionately as a vehicle for speculation. By contrast he said Libra has been purpose-built to scale as a payments network and could quickly emerge as a major competitor despite its ongoing issues with regulators. “Libra isn’t dead,” he said,“they’re just navigating the regulatory nightmare.” However, Vaz dismissed central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), describing them as a weak “defensive posture” in response to the threat crypto assets posed to …

Facebook and Instagram filed suit against a user who, they allege, operated a cloaking service that allowed ads for a range of scams to slip through the advertisement reviews for both platforms. Facebook’s accusations and request for relief In a civil complaint filed with a federal court in San Francisco on April 9, the social media giants accuse Bassant Gaijar of operating LeadCloak, a software provider specializing in cloaking ads. Per the complaint, Facebook alleges that: “[Gaijar’s] cloaking services were used to promote, among other things, deceptive diet pills and pharmaceuticals, cryptocurrency investment scams, and even misinformation about the economic …

In a recent discussion with Morgan Creek Digital Partner Anthony Pompliano, Social Capital CEO and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya asserted that the price of Bitcoin (BTC) will either reach “millions,” or go to “zero.” For Palihapitiya, the question of whether Bitcoin succeeds will be determined by whether the architects of the existing financial system continue on the current path toward debasement. BTC price will either go to the moon or the gutter Palihapitiya asserts that his case for BTC gaining over 100x from its current price rests on deteriorating public confidence in the dominant financial apparatus and money commodities. …

In recent months, big-name players like Google and Apple have been going the extra mile to showcase their privacy features to the world. However, as most people are now aware, these multinational companies have business models that are centered around collecting and aggregating the data of their customers. In this regard, growing interest in privacy-first browsers like Brave clearly suggests a collective increase in internet users’ concern over how their personal information is being accumulated, stored and utilized on a day-to-day basis. Individuals all over the globe have become so accustomed to using free search, chat, video and other web …

Janet Jackson’s billionaire ex husband, Wissam Al Mana, has demanded that Facebook reveal who was behind ads on the platform that used his image to promote a crypto scam. The case stems from late February when Al Mana filed a lawsuit against the social media giant about a cryptocurrency scam using his name to promote itself in the Middle East. Al Mana claimed defamation, malicious falsehood and false advertising from the purported cryptocurrency firm ‘Bitcoin Trader’. One man to sue them all Facebook has since deleted the offending ads, but Al Mana is concerned fraudsters can publish similar ads containing …

Chinese social media giant saw a massive data breach result in data of millions of users available for sale on the dark web. According to a March 19 report from Chinese blockchain news outlet Jinse, basic account information of 172 million users was available, priced at 0.177 BTC. The account information for sale included user ID, number of Weibo posts, number of fans and followers, gender and geographical location. Weibo confirmed the privacy issue yet deleted the post later on According to Jinse, Weibo’s security director Luo Shiyao responded to the incident in a now-deleted post, explaining that: “Users' mobile …

Several members of the Facebook-backed Libra Project have announced their alliance with a rival stablecoin project known as Celo. Since the middle of March, members that have joined the Celo Alliance for Prosperity include, among many others, Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Mercy Corps, Andreessen Horowitz and Bison Trails Co. The shift in interest from one project to the other may signal the ultimate demise of Libra, as several companies have departed the project. In October of last year, the Libra Association took a major hit when five of its most prominent backers — PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and eBay — left. …

Governments are now considering tracking online user data as a way to fight the rapid spread of COVID-19. As a result, the question of personal data privacy is increasingly becoming a subject of discussion within the crypto community. On March 17, the Washington Post reported that the United States government was in talks with internet giants like Facebook and Google about using smartphone location data to combat COVID-19. One highlighted tactic includes tracking whether people are self-isolating in a way that successfully stems the outbreak, as has already occured in Israel, China, and Iran. In recent years, leaders in the …

Some of the biggest names in Facebook’s embattled Libra Association have joined a rival stablecoin project, which touts its mission as the promotion of financial inclusion using the blockchain. Dubbed the “Celo Alliance for Prosperity,” the project was unveiled on March 11, with key Libra backers Coinbase Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Anchorage Mercy Corps and Bison Trails Co. joining the ranks of its 50 founding members. The combined reach of the Alliance members at launch is ostensibly estimated at 400 million people. Aside from veterans of the Libra Association, high-profile members of the Celo Alliance include Carbon, GiveDirectly, Grameen Foundation, Maple, …

Amid intensifying fears over the coronavirus, the United States stock market saw another historic day causing whopping losses for the world’s richest people. On March 9, the U.S. stocks experienced another dismal day, with major stock indices like the S&P 500 and Dow Jones plunging more than 7%. This coincided with a major bloodbath in crypto markets, with Bitcoin (BTC) dropping nearly 10% over a day. According to some reports, Monday, March 9 became the worst day for U.S. stocks since 2008. At $6 billion, Bernard Arnault suffered the biggest losses on the day Referred to as Black Monday, the …

The second day of Fintech Worldwide’s Blockchain Summit kicked off to unusually glorious sunshine. But you’d be hard pressed to notice that in the venue because there was no natural light filtering through to the handful of attendees that braved the ongoing coronavirus scare. Despite COVID-19’s spectre looming large over the conference, panelists spoke about an impressive range of topics, including how Blockchain can help local women in the Maasai Mara, to the day’s debate on the state of adoption. As MakerDAO’s Gustav Arentoft told me during the conference, speakers in London often come from a more institutional perspective that …