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, …

A higher education institution that trains Chinese Communist Party officials has published a new book about cryptocurrency. According to a local blockchain news report on May 19, the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China — also known as the Central Party School — published the book as part of a book series on disruptive technologies. Previous entries in the series include “A Dialogue With Party Leaders About AI” and“ A Dialogue With Party Leaders About Blockchain”. The aim of the book series is to provide a source for party officials and the general public …

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 …

Crypto industry leaders and law experts debated the privacy implications of central bank digital currencies, known as CBDCs, during the "Money Re-Imagined" panel as part of Consensus:Distributed on Monday. Lawrence Summers, the former United States treasury secretary and former chief economist of the World Bank, argued that the current fiat monetary system exhibits issues of too much privacy, advancing that a CBDC should seek to facilitate greater oversight capabilities. The current monetary system has "too much privacy" Summers argued that supporting the anonymous movement of multimillion-dollar sums of money should not be an objective of financial policy: “Of all of …

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 …

Cypherium blockchain joins the Microsoft for Startups program with the goal of becoming a part of the company’s blockchain-as-a-service, or BaaS, offering in the coming months. Cypherium blockchain uses a combination of proof-of-work, or PoW, and HotStuff consensus algorithms. The latter is also used by Facebook’s Libra project. Libra retreating In a Cointelegraph interview, Cypherium CEO, Sky Guo, said that with the recent changes made to the Libra whitepaper, his project is seemingly the only permissionless platform to use HotStuff: “Also Libra originally planned to become permissionless in the next five to three years. But recently in their new whitepaper, …

In a fresh move to revive Facebook-backed digital currency project Libra, the Libra Association has onboarded another member. British payment startup Checkout.com has joined the Libra Association, becoming the 24th member engaged with the mission of building a better global payment network, Libra tweeted on April 28. Tech advancements would fail without necessary regulatory frameworks Guillaume Pousaz, Checkout.com founder and CEO, officially announced the news in a company statement on Tuesday. The executive outlined that Checkout.com joins Libra’s efforts to not only promote technological advancement but contribute to the formation of necessary regulatory framework to drive mass adoption of better …

Despite existing concerns that blockchain is not mature enough to bring the new era of payments, the technology is being increasingly explored by global central banks. Blockchain technology meanwhile remains at the core of Facebook’s digital currency Libra, according to a top project executive. Since Libra’s white paper release in June 2019, the not-yet-launched stablecoin has continued to rely on blockchain architecture, Libra Association’s vice chair Dante Disparte explained. Blockchain unlocks payment network interoperability In an April 28 interview with financial publication Central Banking, Disparte outlined a number of structural benefits provided by blockchain implementation. As part of the blockchain-powered …

A recent report from Binance Research claimed Facebook's Libra is as disruptive for the payments industry as SpaceX was for interstellar travel — but why? When it entered the rocket sector, SpaceX found an industry laden with high entry barriers and largely dominated by public market players, a Binance Research representative told Cointelegraph in an email. Therefore, the industry also yielded "little movement, as there were hardly any incentives to innovate beyond incrementally improving the product," the rep said. "The same is true for the current payments landscape." Borders limit the current payment systems In a recent in-depth report on …