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Bitcoin.com Gives Major Update On Development Fund Proposal; BCH Users Sigh In Relief

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Bitcoin Cash is no stranger to controversies. Since its hard fork from Bitcoin, the fourth largest cryptocurrency in the market has tried everything to establish itself as the foremost name in the digital assets space.

The latest issue to the Bitcoin Cash community was the proposal to direct 12.5 percent of all newly issued coins to fund technology development. The proposal was met with a lot of criticism and now it looks like Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver has heard their pleas.

In a Bitcoin.com blog post, Roger Ver stated that the network will not be going through the proposed 12.5 percent coin distribution. He said that for such a proposal to go through, it needed more agreement from within the ecosystem. According to Bitcoin.com:

“As it stands now, Bitcoin.com will not go through with supporting any plan unless there is more agreement in the ecosystem such that the risk of a chain split is negligible.We think it is clear that the existing proposal does not have enough support, and we will be working to come up with a plan that is profitable for all the relevant parties and which preserves the fundamental economics of Bitcoin Cash.”

The organization revealed that they had put the discussion up for a vote because they consider developer funding an important issue. Bitcoin.com informed the community that new ways will be devised to ensure Bitcoin Cash becomes fast reliable cash for the world. The Roger Ver led company recognized that the lack of clarity was one of the main drivers for the community split.

During the initial consideration, the proposal had a high chance of passing because the interest companies controlled one-third of BCH’s computing power. This led to other parts of the Bitcoin Cash community threatening to leave the system if the proposal was passed. To avoid this sort of confusion in later instances, Bitcoin.com listed out some rules.

  • Developers in need of funding should put together clear funding proposals upfront
  • Businesses need to devise clear plans for devs to create impactful changes to BCH
  • All BCH communities must work together to propagate BCH positively

Bitcoin.com has also advised developers that all funding proposals mus be temporary and reversible. According to the organization, permanent changes to the BCH blockchain was against the values of the cryptocurrency. Roger Ver added that “development for development’s sake” would beat the purpose of fundraising.

The company urged users to think about the bigger picture and what steps could be taken to achieve that goal. Bitcoin.com promised its users that they will not risk a chain split which would threaten the end game of being reliable digital cash.

Bitcoin Cash is not the first company to toy with the developer distribution idea. Fellow companies such as Block.one and Tron have also gone down this path and continue to follow the system even today.

 

 

Man Behind BitLicense Is Confident That Technologies Like Ripple’s ODL Is Key To The Future

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Ripple has made it a point to create blockchain and cryptocurrency products that are designed to work seamlessly with institutional companies. This has also been reflected in Ripple’s collaborations as well as its roadmap.

During the recently concluded Swell conference, former New York State Superintendent of Financial Services, Benjamin Lawsky discussed the origins and design of New York’s popular BitLicense

Lawsky sat down with Stuart Alderoty, Ripple’s General Counsel to discuss the origins and design of BitLicense and how it laid the foundation for a plethora of crypto companies. Lawsky claimed that BitLicense was first envisioned because of the sheer lack of regulatory clarity in the fintech space. In his words, cryptocurrency companies were being subject to Civil War-era regulations in the middle of 2014.

Lawsky elucidated:

“FinTech was a world of innovation, which has led a thousand flowers to bloom and basically has no regulation, colliding with the world of financial services, which is the most conservatively, fully-regulated area we have.”

The creation of the BitLicense was first met with trepidation by the cryptocurrency community. Once they realized that the license actually gives them credibility, several companies applied for it. Lawsky and his team crafted a framework that could provide the confidence that licensed companies have sufficient capital, consumer protection, and cybersecurity controls.

Since its launch, 22 companies have obtained a BitLicense allowing them to run smoothly within the vicinity of New York and other affiliated areas. At the same time, 15 companies had declined to obtain the license. Out of those, seven have either suffered a hack or have gone through money laundering issues.

The BitLicense founder then spoke to Ripple about how the US was falling behind countries such as Singapore when it comes to innovation in the fintech space. Lawsky pointed out that the US was very slow in 2019 and that has allowed South Asian countries to leapfrog them.

Lawsky candidly mentioned that the laws put forth by Singapore had taken the extra steps to ensure cryptocurrency inclusivity. According to him, cryptocurrency regulations should find ways to ensure that both the big companies as well as startups have a level playing field. He urged new framework creators that characteristics such as multi-sig and tokenziation should be added into their fold.

The future:

Benjamin Lawsky was confident that progressive states like California would make the right decision to propagate the cryptocurrency industry. This included institutions working hand in hand with fintech companies to create a safer environment for users. He picked out Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity [ODL] feature as one of the disruptors within the mainstream financial market.

IOTA Sees Developments On All Sectors As HoneycombOS Launches

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The hardware component of the cryptocurrency industry is at times overlooked in discussions related to the field. That has slowly been changing with the advent of new and improved machines to facilitate better networking capabilities.

IOTA, the cryptocurrency based on the Internet of Things revealed a lot of plans for 2020 earlier this month but now it has also received a hardware boost.

In his latest blog, Bernardo Rodrigues spoke about the honeycombOS release which was launched to make IOTA and the Tangle network more seamless. The honeycombOS is an embedded Linus Distribution tailored for IOTA nodes, clients and Tangle related tools.

The operating system will be majorly based on Poky and will take tools from OpenEmbedded and the Yoto Project. Poky is a reference distribution of the Yocto Project which contains the OpenEMbedded Build System as well as data to build one’s own distro.

The Yocto Project as a whole was created as an open-source collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linus based systems. This would be done regardless of the system and hardware architecture. The latest honeycomb OS will work on meta-iota which will also be supported by the IOTA Ecosystem Development Fund. The IEDF webpage claims that it wants to empower development and innovation within the IOTA ecosystem by funding ideas across the globe.

The IEDF chooses projects based on merit and according to the developers of honeycombOS, it performs better than standard distros like DietPi, Armbian, etc. The functionalities of the honeycombOS were stated in its official release as:

“honeycombOS is meant to be as minimalist and light as possible, so all CPU power is used for Tangle related computations. Therefore, there’s no GUI, and everything needs to be done via terminal. honeycombOS is 100% cross-compiled from source, which means community feedback will drive improvements for next iterations”

At present time, the honeycombOS only contains the Hornet v0.3.0 which does not contain all the functionalities of IOTA’s IRI [IOTA Reference Implementation]. The IRI runs on nodes in the public IOTA networks where clients can transfer IOTA as well as other cryptocurrencies. honeycombOS’s has only been tested on the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4, with later iterations to be tested out soon.

The aforementioned developments are aimed to bolster IOTA’s mainstream adoption which in turn will affect the cryptocurrency’s price. At press time, IOTA was trading for $0.25 with a total market cap of $699.4 million. After a 2.43 percent increase on the daily chart, the 24-hour market volume was at $8.74 million.

Stellar Lumens Seeks To Fix Kinks In Armor With Latest Updates

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Stellar Lumens has been active since the start of the new year and that has reflected in the developments also. The cryptocurrency company has promised its user base that the network updates scheduled for the forthcoming weeks will make the chain much more efficient. 

The company’s latest Stellar Developer Digest touched on the major updates over the last week, combined with a discussion on the next Stellar testnet rest.

The next Stellar testnet reset is scheduled to occur on January 29, a date set by the dev team to iron out any kinks present. The general recovery process from a testnet reset was articulated by the Stellar team frontend engineering department. The testnet is reset every 3 months and setting up a quarterly reminder to manually create the accounts is not the most efficient method.

The Stellar Lumens team has created a code script to check whether a known account exists and if it does not, it submits a handful of transactions. The latest application to be featured in the Stellar blog was Testnet.ai, an XLM testnet token manager. According to the Stellar Lumens blog:

“The testnet reset is in two days. A reset clears all testnet accounts, balances, assets, and offers. To make it easier for projects to recover, Testnet.ai created a tool that allows you to issue and delete custom assets, create and customize market-making strategies, recreate assets and markets after a reset, and more.”

Testnet.ai claims to reduce the friction of building and testing Stellar assets on the XLM blockchain. The team behind the application have also stated that they want to lower the barrier for entry for building localized testing environments.

Stellar Lumens also talked about its Horizon ingestion engine which was launched to much fanfare last week. The team behind the launch spruced up any hangups int eh development phase with the release of Horizon 1.0.0 Alpha.

According to the team, the 1.0.0 version will set important new endpoints, which were not possible with the earlier code architecture. The latest Horzion update is also touted to improve service availability for production deployments.

One of the biggest complaints raised by Stellar customers was that processes such as pathfinding were slow. The new Horizon engine solves that problem by making all the endpoints faster. Toe ensure that no information is lost within the blockchain, the data inconsistency due to lag between endpoints has also been eliminated.

Despite the multitude of changes in the chain, XLM supporters want to see real movement in terms of price. As the market begins to stabilize,  XLM supporters can only wait to see a price action that will rocket the crypto on the charts.

Ripple Reiterates The Importance of XRP Escrows By Quoting Original Blog

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The XRP community as a whole is known to stay as a tight-knit group with a single-minded focus to propagate the cryptocurrency. Taking on this mission has also allowed Ripple to work in other areas of the organization such as escrow accounts.

The concept of Ripple’s escrow has become of paramount importance during the cryptocurrency‘s current tenure. This was the reason why Ripple re-released their blog post on the XRP escrow, written by David Schwartz.

In the Ripple Insights blog, Schwartz talked about how 55 billion XRP was locked away in a series of escrows to provide additional XRP predictability. To make sure there is a track on all XRP, the escrows are built on the ledger itself. According to Schwartz:

“The escrow consists of independent on ledger escrows that release a total of one billion XRP each month over the next 55 months. This provides an upper limit on the amount of new XRP that can be brought into circulation. The amount of XRP actually released into circulation will likely be much less than this.”

The key concept of the escrow technology was that if there was any additional XRP leftover each month, then they will be placed into a new escrow. Ripple has doubled down on the escrow part of the company because of multiple rumors surrounding it.

According to the latest reports, the last 1 billion XRP escrow ended this month. Ripple has also stated that in the upcoming 30 months, there will be two escrows of 500 million XRP each. Ripple has claimed that if an escrow is successfully finished, then it delivers the XRP back to its destination account. This ensures that the security and integrity of the ledger are always maintained.

The escrow system works by including three types of transactions and one type of ledger entry. In the blog post, Schwartz touched upon source and destination tags within the escrow ecosystem. These tags act as reliable ways to support hosted accounts on behalf of its customers.

Ripple has stated frankly that it expects escrows to be used for higher-value “one-ledger and cross-ledger atomic payments”. By implementing escrows, the XRPL provides payment channels for a lower value, off-ledger payments, and micropayments.

The XRP escrow lock-in also helped in stemming XRP’s price slide. Most of the XRP escrow tranches were now locked, allowing the system to remain stable. Ripple last unlocked their escrow on January 1 when tokens worth $192 million was released.

 

Top 10 Cryptocurrencies With Real Life Use Case

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Top 10 Cryptocurrencies: Experts believe it’s about time people began associating digital currencies with their utility, rather than the hype of blockchains. Bitcoins and other digital assets might be fading into proportionate loss of confidence in cryptos as a store of value. Meanwhile, this loss of interest may not necessarily affect the advancement and improvement of blockchain technology. But could impair the gradual process of adoption. Only an irrefutable proof of value to consumers and enterprises will drive the next phase of growth.
The short term wins of the crypto-verse are over. Cryptos with real-life use cases will drive crypto growth in 2020. If we look more carefully into the market we can definitely find a few blockchain projects, the ones created to be useful in real life. In this article, we will tell you about the top10 cryptos, the ones you can use in your real life.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin

A factual study was going round that Bitcoin can outweigh digital gold. However, this is only possible if Bitcoin could spawn a barrel of real-life use cases. ARK, a prominent investment research firm noted three feasible Bitcoin user cases that could drive Bitcoin to a trillion-dollar capitalization. One such example is the use of bitcoin as a form of non-seizable offshore wealth asset. The aggregate net worth of High Net Worth Individual (HNWI) purportedly neighbors $50 trillion figures. Would Bitcoin secure a small percentage of this aggregate, then the asset could attain a trillion-dollar valuation.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum

Ethereum’s utility goes beyond the financial world. While it is simple to categorize both Bitcoin and Ethereum as one, Bitcoin lacks an actual use case besides being a digital currency. However, the main agenda of Ethereum was to create a programmable layer of smart contracts for deploying decentralized applications.

The utility aspects of the ethereum blockchain range from organizations and enterprises intending to deploy their ethereum blockchains.

Ripple

Ripple

Ripple’s entry into the crypto market was to solve the challenges of blockchain scalability. This aspect would form the basis of the Ripple Network’s major selling point. The platform has a throughput capacity of at least 50,000 transactions per second. Additionally, XRP coins were meant to facilitate real-time transactions with negligible transaction fees. Ripple’s target market are institutions such as banks. The network would help increase its efficiencies. Furthermore, the network describes its native network – XRP as the world’s fastest and reliable digital currency for making payments.

Apollo

Apollo

The Apollo Currency (APL) is a privacy coin dubbed as the all in one decentralized token. APL boasts of being the only cryptocurrency that combines almost all the features of existing altcoins into one platform. Noteworthy, APL is built upon proof of stake consensus mechanism and also allows holders to forge new tokens through its wallet software. The total supply of APL altcoins is 21 billion and there at least 15 billion coins in circulation.

Tron

Tron
TRON

Myriads of scalability issues plagued Ethereum since inception. Tron benefits from the disadvantages of Ethereum. Note that the creators behind Tron wanted to inspire all Ethereum features but a level of boosted scalability. Tron does not charge any costs for executing smart contract transactions, unlike Ethereum. However, the Tron network promises a remarkable throughput of 2,000 transactions per second. Striking similarities with Ethereum include the ability to create smart contracts by implementing Solidity. Tron founders recently outlined plans of providing additional privacy layers to transform the currency into a privacy coin.

Monero

Monero

A privacy coin at the center of all financial transactions, Is what comes to mind at the mention of Monero. Privacy makes monero such a valuable asset for cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Financial analysts believe that monero would be such a favorable store of value for people during oppressive regimes. While Bitcoin’s first impression was providing anonymity in a world of centralized data systems, Bitcoin’s blockchain would still store a record of transactions. Hence failing to achieve anonymity. Monero solved this problem by coming up with multiple stealth addresses, ring signatures, and permanent IP obfuscation.

Dash

Dash

Dash came into existence as an altcoin for making cryptocurrency easier and paved the way for mainstream adoption. Instant confirmations and ability to solve the problem of double-spending positioned Dash among the most revolutionary projects. Take the instance of a cafeteria vending machine accepting bitcoin payments. Would it not take forever given Bitcoins long confirmation times. Not forgetting high transaction fees.

Factom

Factom

 

Factom came to birth in 2014 as the undisputable record keeper of immutable and trustable data. Once a record is placed on Factom, changes are impossible to make. Therefore, an essential record would act as trust against which future verifications can be executed. Peter Kirby, the founder of the platform, had noted significant constraints on the bitcoin blockchain, barred the scope for innovation and prominent solutions. Meanwhile, the Factom ecosystem implements both its blockchain and Bitcoin to achieve the following:

  • Proof of Audit
  • Proof of Existence
  • Proof of Process

Gollem

Gollem

Gollem is an open-source, decentralized supercomputer built on the Ethereum blockchain. The native cryptocurrency of the Golem network is called Golem Network Tokens or GNT. Supply of these coins is fixed, and the price would likely increase with further adoption of the platform. It is easy to liken Golem to the AirBnB in computing. A place where technologies can power their websites, execute CGI rendering, conduct energy-intensive calculations and execute long lines of code. Golem’s computation resources could also enable you to mine other cryptocurrencies.

IOTA

IOTA

IOTA is the first of its kind cryptocurrency that does not use a blockchain. The coin implements what it calls the Tangle technology. These projects will power the next generation of the internet of things. Transactions are entirely free. An aspect that is impossible with other altcoins. On the low side of things, the adoption rate for IOTA is quite low. However, the coin has great potential to go mainstream.

Bottom line

The utility is the most important question one would ask when it comes to technology. It is fair and reasonable that technology goes mainstream because its impacts could touch lives. Therefore, this aspect of use case is a core concern while assessing the future of any innovation.

 

Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse Claims Remittance Market will Change The Financial State of Immigrants for The Better

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The cross border transaction industry has been on the cusp of glory for a couple of months now. Several organizations, mainstream or otherwise, have taken a keen interest in the growing market.

Ripple, the popular cryptocurrency organization has now claimed that other than expanding economies, the remittance market was also improving the lives of people.

Brad Garlinghouse, the Chief Executive Officer of Ripple was recently talking at the World Economic Forum at Davos where he touched upon the positive impacts of the remittance market.

According to him, changing the dynamic of the financial market to suit the need of every individual should be the number one priority. Garlinghouse added that financial organizations should consider the needs of immigrants too while creating new monetary policies.

The Ripple CEO gave his two cents on the issue of immigrants by stating:

“Those who have the least, pay the most. For immigrants, dramatically reducing the cost of remittances changes the ability for billions to participate in the financial system.”

Cross border payment systems like Ripple are on a mission to ensure that people do not need to worry about their savings just because they are in another country. This fact was also highlighted by Ripple official Marcus Treacher in a new blog. Treacher had claimed that 2020 will be the year where foreign travellers could use their native currencies to conduct purchases in multiple countries.

Marcus Treacher’s comments ran in conjunction with Garlinghouse’s sentiment of helping the immigrants. The Ripple boss was candid in mentioning that the current payments systems were skewed to benefit ‘the man’. This disparity is one of the main hindrances that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology plans to remove.

Brad Garlinghouse envisions a future where the banking system is much more streamlined and efficient. He also commented on the rivalries between XRP and Bitcoin, calling the latter just a store of value. The Ripple CEO frankly admitted that he did not believe BTC would become a payments standard. He added that buying anything with BTC would be extremely time-consuming.

Conclusion

One of the biggest arguments for the cryptocurrency industry has been its ability to give the power back to the people. At a time when banks are accused of charging mammoth interests on the poor, it makes sense to adopt a system that is all about transferring the capital safely and securely. Comments from individuals like Brad Garlinghouse cannot be pushed away for the sheer fact that the fiat currency model is not perfect. That is also the reason why Garlinghouse has reiterated the concept of partnerships between institutional and crypto organizations.

Ripple Predicts Asian Market Takeover And a Leaner Payments System In 2020

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Ripple’s focus on the cross border transaction market has been evident from all its updates and developments. But apart from this, the company has revealed that they want to create a more seamless payment network easily accessible to society.

In a recent Ripple blog post, Marcus Treacher, the Ripple SVP Customer Success spoke about what lies in store for financial markets in 2020.

The Ripple official had five major pointers as to what might change in the coming months. Treacher spoke about how the international payments market will continue to get faster and smaller by leveraging emerging technologies. He claimed that there will be more developments oriented towards consumer solutions and increased SME needs.

Marcus Treacher opined that major mainstream banks will delve fully into making cross border transactions faster than ever. This is expected to be done by reducing overhead costs, a major hindrance in the current scenario. To carry out this plan, banks are expected to use upcoming technologies like the Interledger Protocol [ILP].

Today Ripple works closely with a lot of institutional investors and the insights the company received are invaluable. Treacher predicted that in the coming months, banks will turn to cloud providers of banking technology to help reduce overhead costs. According to the Ripple blog:

“…cloud-hosted banking technology providers have developed new platforms with modern methods, pioneers of cloud service providers are ideally positioned to easily and inexpensively integrate into emerging blockchain networks, Artificial Intelligence (AI) engines and other emerging fintech categories—meaning the competitive advantage of innovative banks over slower-moving rivals will be intensified.”

Building consumer solutions on an international level was also a  major area of interest for Ripple and other companies. One concept being tested out is in the field of instant cross border settlement. This would mean that an international tourist can conduct payments in a foreign country while trading in their native currency.

This would be done by tying up banks in multiple countries under the umbrella of a decentralized blockchain network. Micropayments have been tested out in small scale applications like Telegram and Line but the vision for the future is to scale it on a global level.

Small-to-Medium Enterprises [SMEs] are expected to be the biggest beneficiaries of the burgeoning decentralized economy. Marcus Treacher stated that if SMEs use blockchain technology, it will free up more capital for reinvestment. This is then expected to open up SMEs to new markets.

The Asian and the South Asian markets have taken multiple steps over the past few months to become major players in the decentralized economy. This determination to outdo the western markets has been a reason why more and more Asian companies were adopting blockchain technology. Treacher revealed that this rapid expansion will increase the digital asset trade rate coming in from Asia, which at present stands at a whopping eighty percent.

Bitcoin Cash Miners Pushing BCH Ecosystem Via Development Fund Infrastructure

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Bitcoin Cash Miners Pushing BCH Ecosystem Via Development Fund Infrastructure

The latest reports reveal that Bitcoin cash miners have to donate part of their profits to the development of the ecosystem. It was announced by Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of BTC.TOP, the largest Bitcoin Cash (BCH) mining pool. 

Jiang Zhuoer notes that miners should voluntarily transfer 12.5% of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) block rewards to a development fund. Besides BTC.TOP, Antpool, Antpool and ViaBTC и Bitcoin.com are the other large mining pools who are supporting the idea. Jiang quickly noted that; 

“12.5% of [the] BCH coinbase rewards to a fund that will support Bitcoin Cash infrastructure.”

 The fund is a Hong Kong-based entity, set up legally for accepting and dispersing funds and to provide funding up to six months for supporting the infrastructure of Bitcoin Cash.

 The sole aim of the fund is to execute this proposal into the May 2020 protocol upgrade of Bitcoin Cash. Amount of funds received per day would be approximately 112.5 BCH, and in six months it would become 20, 588 BCH. According to the current market prices of BCH, the fund is to receive an estimated $7.1 million in aggregate.

 The proposal has got support from other large mining pools that are working on Bitcoin Cash. Among other mining pools include BTC.com, Antpool, Bitcoin.com, and ViaBTC. More importantly, these five pools depict about 34.5% or more than a third of Bitcoin Cash’s hash rate.

 Furthermore, there have remained debates over funding BCH infrastructure development. Last summer, the Bitcoin Cash community accumulated money to go towards several BCH development teams. Recently, five pools have shown their desire for donating funds to engineering teams working on the development infrastructure.

 Zhuoer also mentioned that the corporate donation process on the verge of a few significant problems. One of the miners said that Zhuoer’s example of corporate donations that went badly is the influence of Blockstream over the development of Bitcoin Core’s which served centralization in BTC’s development. Besides, the blog post of Zhuoer emphasizes that centralized development has brought impediments to Satoshi’s plan.

 As per blog post, this proposal may be disputatious, and some in the community may have distrust toward it. However, despite the difficulties, the plan will move further.

 

Vodafone Becomes Next Major Player To Quit Facebook’s Libra; States Focus on ‘M-Pesa’ as Reason

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Regulatory authorities have always determined the fate of several cryptocurrency companies and as time passes the rules have become more and more stringent.  When Facebook decided to launch its own cryptocurrency last year, it did so with a lot of backers in its kitty. But looks like things are changing now.

According to recent reports, Facebook’s Libra has lost yet another partner in between a maelstrom of regulatory uncertainty. This comes after months of open-ended discussions about the much talked about cryptocurrency.

On January 22nd, Vodafone announced that it was pulling out of the Libra project. After this, the British telecommunication giant becomes one of the names joining Paypal and Mastercard as they leave the Libra family. An official statement from the company 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 committed to that goal and feel we can make the most contribution by focusing our efforts on [mobile payments platform] M-Pesa.”

M-Pesa is a money platform for smartphones with a massive presence in developing countries such as Kenya. Vodafone has stated that it wants to elevate M-Pesa’s 30 million users across 10 countries.

Once Vodafone’s exodus was announced, Libra took measures to show that there were no problems within its doors. To put out the growing fires, Dante Disparte, the head of policy and communications for the Libra association gave his two cents on the future of Facebook’s cryptocurrency.

Disparte claimed that the organization would continue to stick to its core values and deliver products. He candidly admitted that the makeup of the Association members may change over time but that was “only natural”.

Vodafone has joined payments giants such as Mastercard and Visa as companies that backed out of the Libra project. The debit and credit card giants had decided to leave back in October 2019, mainly pointing at the giant cloud of regulatory uncertainty. Both the companies had quit the roster a  few days before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the House Committee on Financial Services.

Several regulators have raised multiple concerns over Libra and that has been the major obstacle impeding its launch. Libra was supposed to launch in early 2020 but looking at the problems within its system, it looks like it will be more delayed. Libra had also lost Mercado Pago, a Latin American payments company towards the fag end of 2019.

Although Visa and Mastercard pulled out, a spokesperson from the former stated that there were other options in the works. According to him, Visa was appreciative of what Facebook was doing and remain open to working with Libra at a much later stage.