Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that Libra would not get off the ground for at least three years. He thinks regulatory scrutiny over Facebook’s crypto project is due to the social media giant’s privacy debacle last year.
PayPal was the only company noticeably absent at the recently held Libra Association meeting. The payment giant is reportedly planning to quit Facebook’s project to keep its hands clean of regulatory dirt.
Apple’s Tim Cook has snubbed-off any plans to launch any cryptocurrency. He said that currency matters best belong to government and regulators and private organizations should stay away from it.
The Libra Association mentions four key milestone to be achieved before the mainnet launch. The focus is to get at least 100 partners working as operating nodes on the Libra network.
Broadridge Financial Solutions plans to offer post-trade services for cryptocurrency after acquiring fintech company Shadow Financial Systems. The company invested in blockchain projects, but the Shadow deal will be its foray into cryptocurrency.
Facebook’s Libra is facing many regulatory challenges that have made institutional backers like MasterCard, Stripe, PayPal, and Visa lead several other potential partners in casting their doubts about the project.
The bankers have explicitly stated that Facebook’s Libra will pose huge threat to the consumer demand for deposit accounts, payment volumes, and business models built on privacy.
Mark Zuckerberg said that if the Democratic Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren was to come to power, and pursue her agenda of breaking the Big Tech companies, Facebook won’t step back from fighting the U.S. government in the court.
A Fintech as a service Rapyd network, that allows consumers and businesses to transact however they opt for cross-border and local eCommerce transactions, raised a whopping $100M financing round spearheaded by Oak HC/FT together with Stripe.
PayPal is buying a 70% equity state in Chinese GoPay. According to PayPal, the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019 and is subject to customary closing conditions.
A challenger bank based in the Netherlands has increased its coverage area to cater to the European Union. Bunq also offers extra services including an affordable Travel Card, on which there are no charges.
Revolut, a UK-based financial technology company that offers banking services, has signed a new deal with Visa. Through it, Revolut will expand its services to 24 new markets and hire 3500 employees.
Band Protocol, Sequoia-backed data management company, has launched the mainnet of its decentralized trading app BitSwing. The dapp serves as a brokerage for Ethereum-denominated binary options.
Tencent has agreed to acquire all the shares belonging to the Norway-based KGJ Capital AS, which is currently the largest shareholder in Funcom.
Ripple Labs Inc has made a little-known but significant acquisition – Iceland-based of Algrim, which is a cryptocurrency trading firm with small but mighty talent pool.