After facing an act of infringement, Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, urged the citizens to “to remain vigilant when dealing with cryptocurrency platforms.” He observed that in BitClout, a social token platform, someone has set up a profile to sell tokens using the information from his Twitter account, without his authorized consent. Loong said: I have nothing to do with the platform. It is misleading and done without my permission. On April 2, in a Facebook post

David Marcus, the head of Facebook Financial (F2), has said that Facebook’s Diem is to greenlight its launch in 2021. It has been reported by Marcus that both cryptocurrency Diem and related crypto wallet Novi could be launched next year. Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 on December 8, he stated that regulators should finally let Facebook move forward with its cryptocurrency. He added: “I don’t think what we are asking for is just immediate trust. I think […] w

The report said that Facebook has been hit with threats of legal action due to the rebranding of the Libra stablecoin project to ‘Diem’ from a finance application of the same name. It has been reported that Facebook announced its plan to rebrand Libra on December 1, with the firm claiming the new name would help the revamped project distance itself from the intense regulatory pushback faced by Libra when it was announced last year. However, Chris Adelsbach, the co-founder of

Paul Grewal, a former US magistrate judge in California is joining the legal team of leading global crypto exchange, Coinbase. On July 8, 2020, an announcement was made by Coinbase on their official blog stating that the addition of Grewal will help “pave the way for the next phase of crypto awareness and adoption.” Paul Grewal joins Coinbase from Facebook, where he served as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. Prior to Facebook, Paul spent more than 5 years as the US

Social media has become indistinguishable from daily life for the majority of people in this developed world. Only 10% of people were on social media platforms in 2010, and it was largely the domain of teens and young people expressing their personalities through the unique backgrounds, embedded songs, and quotes littering their MySpace profiles. By 2017, the percentage of people on at least one social media platform had risen to 80%. Over 3 billion people worldwide have a pr

WhatsApp has announced instant in-app fiat payments for over 120 million users in Brazil. On June 15, it has been reported in a statement released by WhatsApp that 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. However, there’s an unspecified monetary limit imposed due to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the Financing of Terrorism concerns. Additionally, WhatsApp use

Facebook-owned digital wallet Calibra rebranded itself as Novi while sharing new details about the project. A representative for Novi said that the primary reason for the name change was to avoid the confusion with the Libra cryptocurrency: “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 Libra Association on May 6 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. He focussed on the enforcement of all U.S. anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing laws by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Libra, Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, is bringing on as chief executive Stuart

The Calibra Research team of Facebook presented a Distributed Auditing Proofs of Liabilities, or DAPOL, protocol designed to make improvements to the existing distributed audit procedures. The presentation was made recently at the 3rd ZKProof Workshop led by Konstantinos Chalkias, stating that their protocol builds upon and improves existing methods by introducing additional optimization and enhanced privacy. According to the team, their method has considerable advantages ove

Facebook’s Calibra team have published a research paper outlining a new method for Byzantine fault tolerance, or BFT, testing. Termed as “Twins”, it comprises of a lightweight method for testing a network’s BFT implementation. The testing method runs two instances of a node with the same identity to emulate Byzantine behavior “including equivocation, double voting, and losing internal state.” Calibra co-creator David Marcus, tweeted: One of my greatest joys at work is getting

Facebook and Instagram filed suit against a user who operated a cloaking service, which allowed ads for a range of scams to slip through the advertisement reviews for both platforms. #Rakamoto #FridayThoughts #Blockchain #Crypto #Bitcoin #Digital #Money #Coins #Dollar #Bankshttps://t.co/kd23ntvmWw — Blockchain News (@Rakamoto) April 10, 2020 On April 9, it has been reported that in a civil complaint filed with a federal court in San Francisco, the social media giants accuse

Janet Jackson’s ex-husband, the Qatari billionaire Wissam Al Mana, is suing Facebook after a crypto scam used his image to promote itself in the Middle East without his permission. On Feb. 23, The Times reported that Al Mana is claiming defamation, malicious falsehood and false advertising by the unnamed cryptocurrency firm. His defamation action has been filed in Dublin, Facebook’s European headquarters, where the legal framework for such cases is deemed to be more amenable

British Telecom giant Vodafone is the latest member to leave Libra Association while becoming the eighth company to do so. On Jan. 21 2020 a spokesperson from Vodafone confirmed about the departure while adding to the lengthy list of departure. The representative said: “Vodafone Group has decided to withdraw from the Libra Association. We have said from the outset that Vodafone’s desire is to make a genuine contribution to extending financial inclusion. We remain fully commit

The Libra Association, the stablecoin introduced by Facebook in late 2019, has formed a new committee to guide the network’s technical development. Trent Partridge #globalcoin #facebook #crypto currency https://t.co/6wha8vxMWW — Libra Coin News – Trent Partridge (@LibraCoinNews) January 17, 2020 On January 16, it has been reported that the Libra Association has voted to establish the five-member Technical Steering Committee which comprises leading experts from various firms

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, said that the digital world needs oversight, mentioning government regulation as a potential solution but calling community self-governance “another and perhaps even better way.” CoinTelegraph: "In a #Facebook post, Zuckerberg calls for digital community #selfgovernance https://t.co/W7AxHYAvsu" #news $news #crypto $crypto #cryptonews #cryptocurrency #cryptocurrencynews — Crypto Business (@cryptobusiness1) January 11, 2020 On January 9, Z

Steven Mnuchin, the Secretary of the US Treasury, has no issue with the launch of the Facebook-led Libra project, as long as financial rules are followed. Libra Launching early https://t.co/SAagOq9cIl — Bit Coins Bank © (@BankBitCoins) December 7, 2019 On December 5, it has been reported by Bloomberg that Mnuchin is ‘fine’ with Libra launch. He said: “I’m fine if Facebook wants to create a digital currency, but they need to be fully compliant with financial secrecy and anti-

The CEO of South Korean internet giant Kakao, Yeo Min-soo, said that Klaytn blockchain is similar to Facebook’s Libra although it is way ahead in its development. On Nov. 28, the Korea Herald reported on Min-soo’s views on Klatyn’s development during the first Klaytn Governance Council Summit held in Seoul. “Facebook’s Libra launched last month with aims to recruit 100 partners. Libra is taking a similar approach to ours, but it has yet to experience the milestones we have cr

As the Libra stablecoin project continues to face a hostile audience of regulators, Facebook launches a new fiat payment system called ‘Facebook Pay‘. On November 12, Facebook announced that it is introducing Facebook Pay, a payment system that is designed to facilitate payments across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Deborah Liu, the Vice President, Marketplace & Commerce at Facebook said: “People already use payments across our apps to shop, donate to causes an

Dutch Court has ruled that Facebook, the social media giant, must remove Bitcoin-related fraudulent investment ads following local Billionaire and television Producer, John de Mol’s lawsuit against the company, as it has been reported on November 11 by Reuters. However, de Mol initiated judicial proceedings against Facebook in June 2019 by claiming that the social media giant failed to respond to multiple requests to remove ads of a scam that misused his and other celebrities

Kevin Weil, the Vice President of product at Facebook’s Calibra digital wallet unit, said that Libra, the crypto project of Facebook, will be more similar to email tech than payment services such as PayPal. On November 5, Weil, at the Web Summit in Lisbon, spoke about the interoperability — the basic principle of email will be the key concept of Libra. Noting that any global developer or entrepreneur can build wallets for Libra, Weil encouraged the global community to collabo