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LIBRA REVEALED: At long last, concrete details about Facebook’s highly-anticipated cryptocurrency have arrived. The social media giant unveiled Libra on Tuesday, becoming the biggest company in blockchain with some 2.38 billion daily active users across nearly every country on the planet. The new Libra Association, which will oversee the governance of the cryptocurrency, released a trove of documents to outline how its token works, what it will be used for and who can use it. Read our full coverage:
WALLET APPS: To support libra, Facebook is forming a new subsidiary called Calibra, which will develop products and provide financial services around the new crypto’s ecosystem. Details are sparse, but Calibra will start with a digital wallet with which users can hold or transfer funds. The wallet, which will be launched sometime next year, will be integrated with WhatsApp and Facebook’s Messenger apps, alongside standalone apps on iOS and Android. Calibra’s services will abide by various regulatory requirements, however, including KYC/AML/CFT rules. And while the company says it won’t share any user data with its parent, there is an exception. CoinDesk’s Nikhilesh De and Zachary Seward comb through the details.
29 PAGES: The Libra white paper, which describes Facebook’s vision of “a new global currency,” is 29 pages long and indicates that the Libra Blockchain will be “a decentralized, programmable database designed to support a low-volatility cryptocurrency that will have the ability to serve as an efficient medium of exchange for billions of people around the world.” The paper’s authors seemingly picked the best features (in their view) of existing blockchains, with on-chain governance, programmable currency, a permissioned setup, coin burning and a number of other features. CoinDesk’s Brady Dale breaks down the key tenets.
TWO TOKENS: As it turns out, Facebook is not launching one, but two different cryptocurrencies as part of its Libra project. The first is the libra token: a currency broadly available to the public. The second, dubbed the Libra investment token, will only be sold to members of the Libra Association, which will act as the governing consortium for the project. While the libra token will be backed by a basket of fiat currencies and government securities, the interest from this collateral will go to holders of the investment token, who will have the power to make major decisions on the network’s behalf. The libra token itself will be pegged to the aforementioned basket, which will be composed of several different currencies to try and avoid price volatility. CoinDesk’s Marc Hochstein outlines the procedures.
LANGUAGE & GOVERNANCE: Facebook developed its own programming language, dubbed “Move,” with which to build its crypto project. In the hopes of having the broader public inspect and secure the network before it launches on mainnet, Libra has also released “early-stage code” under a permissive license by the Apache Software Foundation. The project is currently expected to go live in 2020, and the Libra Association hopes to have at least 100 nodes supporting the network by then. So far, it’s signed up 28 governing members, including Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase, among others. While Facebook will act in a leadership role for the consortium at the beginning, the plan is for the network to become fully decentralized as more nodes are added. CoinDesk’s Christine Kim and Ian Allison delve deep into the technical aspects of the project. |
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FACEBOOK AFTERMATH: Bitcoin could see a "sell the fact" price pullback to $8,800 over the next 24 hours, having likely priced in the hype surrounding Facebook's cryptocurrency project over the weekend. The social media giant launched the white paper for its Libra project at 09:00 UTC today, yet the market stayed largely flat in the following hours. While the short-duration charts are calling a correction, the longer term indicators still favor a rally to $10,000 eventually. Full story |
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| TWITTER METRICS: Blockchain analytics startup Coin Metrics has launched a cryptocurrency sentiment feed aimed to help traders better develop their trading and portfolio strategies. The feed will take data from social media sites and pass them through artificial intelligence and natural language processing filters to provide a “vital source of information for traders.” The firm’s co-founder and CEO Tim Rice said “We believe that the power of combining sentiment data with granular network and market data is fundamental to building a deeper understanding of crypto assets.” |
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