David Marcus was born in France, grew up in Paris and Geneva, and had shown interest in tech from his early years. At 23, he founded his first company — internet provider GTN — and later sold it. Related: Who Is David Marcus: Bitcoin Believer Turned Facebook Libra Co-Creator Marcus is currently the head of Calibra, a subsidiary of Facebook and the official wallet provider for the Libra cryptocurrency. He is a former head of messaging products at Facebook and was a board member of Coinbase in 2018. Prior to that, Marcus served as the president at PayPal after the …

Today is Saint Valentine’s Day, and in honor of this most romantic of holidays, Cointelegraph presents five of the crypto community’s most notable unions and breakups of the past 12 months. Kelly Lynn Loeffler and Bakkt Kelly Lynn Loeffler split from the crypto world in 2019, but can you blame her? Loeffler left Bitcoin futures exchange Bakkt, where she was CEO, for a place with a slightly bigger cloakroom: the United States Senate. Loeffler was named to replace Georgia’s Republican senator Johnny Isakson, who retired for health reasons. She will reportedly help oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a …

Prediction can be a bit of a gamble. And when cryptocurrency and blockchain are involved, it wouldn’t be surprising to see people shying away from scrying experiments of any sort. Blockchain gets a bad rep because of its relation to Bitcoin (BTC), the cryptocurrency that many love to hate due to its apparently volatile value. But according to George Gilder, co-founder of the Discovery Institute in Seattle: “Blockchain is the future...it will usher in a world beyond Google.” That’s a pretty hefty claim to make. In order for blockchain to truly flourish as the next “global fabric for value exchanges …

In partnership with Facebook, Reuters has established a new unit tasked with identifying misinformation on social media. As Reuters reported on Feb. 12, social media giant Facebook’s Third-Party-Fact-Checking Program and the news outlet have jointly launched a fact-checking initiative in a bid to identify misinformation on social media. Specifically, Reuters will verify information posted on Facebook and Instagram in the run-up to the United States elections and after. Checking user-generated information Reuter’s dedicated unit will assess the authenticity of user-generated media files, headlines and other content in both English and Spanish. Commenting on the initiative, Jess April, director of global …

The deputy director of the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) says the cryptocurrency sector must not abet a “slide backward” in money laundering prevention. FinCEN deputy director Jamal El-Hindi made his remarks during a speech at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association 20th Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Financial Crimes Conference in New York City on Feb. 6. FinCEN won’t allow AML oversight to “slide backward” El-Hindi opened his speech noting the particular complexity of the securities and futures industry, which comprises a dense web of transactions and interactions between inter-related parties. This “amazingly complex” landscape includes but …

Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga explained his concerns about Libra in a Feb. 3 interview with the Financial Times. He bashed Libra for its lack of transparency while arguing that national payment systems are “really stupid.” Mastercard was one of the founding members of the Libra association, along with Visa, PayPal and Stripe. All four left in Oct. 2019 with no proper explanation, though rumors indicated fear of running afoul of regulators. Stepping on governmental toes Compliance appears to have been the primary cause for the sudden decision. The Libra association’s key members reportedly refused to commit to “not do anything …

Following a year that has seen unprecedented interactions between United States legislators and the crypto industry, Cointelegraph has compiled a roster of congresspeople who have established stances and policies for blockchain and cryptocurrency that will shape the future of the industry within the country. Some of the congresspeople listed are bullish on blockchain, while some have established clear opposition to topics like Facebook’s Libra or other cryptocurrencies, but Cointelegraph believes that all of them are worth watching in 2020. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) As ranking member of the Fintech Task Force as well as holding positions within the Blockchain Caucus …

Slowly but surely, institutional players are moving into the crypto/blockchain neighborhood. According to a 2019 Fidelity Investments survey, about 22% of institutional investors already have some exposure to digital assets, with most investments having been made within the past three years. Moreover, 4 in 10 respondents say they are open to future investments in digital assets over the next five years. “Institutional investor involvement in cryptocurrency in 2019 has been primarily about getting the infrastructure in place, such as the opening of Fidelity Digital Assets and Bakkt,” Jonathan Levin, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Chainalysis, told Cointelegraph, adding: “Now …

Back in December 2019, Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Twitter and payments operator Square, announced a new team dubbed Bluesky, to work on decentralized social media standards. The news has gotten both the crypto and noncrypto communities abuzz — and for good reason. Mr. Dorsey has not only spoken in favor of decentralized protocols but (as proven by his work at Square) has committed resources trying to get there. Advocates and thought leaders of Web 3.0 such as Vitalik Buterin, Fred Wilson and Brian Armstrong have applauded this decision as a signal of open protocol acceptance. While it’s …

Blockchain technology is an important tool in addressing the data protection crisis, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser believes. Kaiser, a former business development director at controversial British data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, has discussed global data privacy issues in an interview with Cointelegraph on Jan. 23. Currently serving as co-founder at digital intelligence startup Own Your Data Foundation, Kaiser first came into the spotlight during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed that the firm had collected raw data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles for the Trump campaign. Speaking with Cointelegraph’s head of news Dylan Love at the World …

Major global economists credit Facebook’s Libra with pushing the world to start reconsidering the United States dollar as anchor currency. At a Jan. 23 panel at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, officials and financial experts discussed one of the most important mechanisms in the global financing system — the U.S. dollar, which has become the world’s reserve currency. Libra evoked a future digital currency Called “Challenging the Dominance of the Dollar,” the panel focused on factors that make the U.S. dollar the world’s dominant payment system and reserve currency, as well as the fact that countries over …

At the World Economic Forum panel discussing digital currencies, the conversation topics included Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Calibra’s David Marcus highlighted that regardless of the nature of digital currency, these discussions are key to innovate cross-border payments and solve the issue of the unbanked. Retail CBDCs for consumer access Benoît Coeuré, head of the Bank of International Settlements’ Innovation Hub, revealed that as many as 80 percent of worldwide central banks are interested in CBDCs, primarily of the retail variety. Marcus explained the difference between “retail” and “wholesale” CBDCs: “Central banks could distribute the CBDCs in two possible ways. …