Bitcoin is so speculative and volatile that it doesn’t deserve to be considered an asset class, according to Goldman Sachs.
Diving deeper into the realm of the more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies in existence, things get even more speculative – with traders often jumping on fast-moving and thinly traded tokens for a quick profit and then quickly moving on to the next hot trade. 
That’s why it’s so notable that holders of one token, Chainlink (LINK), appear to be in it for the long term. 
You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here.
Data extracted from the underlying blockchain and cryptocurrency markets reveal declining balances of the token held at exchanges. In the logic of digital-asset traders, that’s seen as a sign that holders of the token have no near-term intention of selling their LINK tokens: After withdrawing the tokens from exchanges, holders are likely either hoard them or send them to be used in smart contracts on the Chainlink blockchain. 
High market capitalization and real users is a rare combination for blockchain networks. But with Chainlink, backers of the project are so devoted that they refer to themselves on social media as “LINK Marines” – a sly reference to the community known as the “XRP Army” that supports the eponymously named token from Ripple. The idea is that LINK investors are “HODLing,” an expression that dates back to early cryptocurrency chat forums and refers to long-term, often ideologically motivated investors.
“Chainlink is the most successful blockchain network over the last two years and we still feel like the underdog,” said Michael Anderson, co-founder of Framework Ventures, which published a Chainlink investment thesis in late 2017. 
During a year when traditional assets like U.S. stocks are floundering, and bitcoin is up 27%, Chainlink more than doubled, making it the top-performing digital asset among the top 10 ranked by market capitalization, according to OnChainFX. The coin’s market value is now almost $3.8 billion. 
Chainlink is a tokenized decentralized network that provides blockchain networks with price feed data collected from sources both on and off blockchains. The protocol offers a potential solution to what is known as the “oracle problem,” or the ability to get the off-chain data needed in many smart contracts. Given that blockchains are intended to operate as “trustless” networks, using outside data requires integrating with a trusted source – an “oracle.” 
“As time goes by, there are definitely some questionable projects that break the top-10 market capitalization ranking for crypto,” said Anil Lulla, analyst at cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital who recently authored a report on blockchain-based oracles. “It’s very easy to point to a lot of names on that list and see very little to no usage.” 
However, the Delphi Digital team was “impressed at some of the early trends we’ve been seeing in usage for Chainlink,” Lulla said. 
So is it bullish that LINK Marines are HODLing? It’s tough to say, according to Lulla. 
“I just don’t see the connection with the token economics,” Lulla wrote in a Telegram message. “But they’re dominating the oracles space so I think the LINK memers can keep this narrative going for a while.” 
A Chainlink spokesperson declined to comment on the data. 
In May 2019, the total amount of LINK held on exchanges began to steadily decrease, a trend that would continue for the next 12 consecutive months, according to Glassnode. 
Source: CoinDesk Research, Glassnode, CoinMetricsExchange withdrawals coincided with the first significant LINK price inflation when the token traded above $1.00 for the first time. And as more tokens left cryptocurrency exchanges, trading volume steadily grew, according to Nomics. 
Source: CoinDesk Research, Glassnode, NomicsSo where where did the LINK tokens taken off exchanges go? 
The data suggest that the Marines are sending their tokens to either their own wallets or Chainlink smart contracts. The percentage of LINK supply held by the top 1% of addresses has grown by almost 25% in the past year, according to Glassnode. 
Median transfer value fell by 77% over the same period, suggesting that when LINK Marines decide to actually transfer tokens, their transactions are increasingly small. 
LINK is also being sent to smart contracts designed to utilize the protocol’s oracle services. According to Glassnode, the year-to-date supply of LINK in smart contracts grew by 1.3% percent. 
Source: CoinDesk Research, GlassnodeThe strong price performance has foiled traders who have taken short positions on LINK, betting on a decline in the token’s price. 
Such challengers have been “getting their faces ripped off” in markets for over a year, Rob Paone, a popular YouTube crypto personality and startup founder, noted in a March 18 tweet. 
At the time of Framework’s investment, according to Anderson, “many of the ‘industry experts’ either said Chainlink was over-engineered,” or that two rival oracle projects, Augur or Uniswap, would ultimately win out.  
Yet the young protocol has inked cross-industry partnerships with Google and Tezos, for example. 
And the LINK Marines are staying faithful. 
Tweet of the dayBitcoin watchSource: TradingView.comTrend: Bitcoin is struggling to maintain momentum after Wednesday’s convincing break above the psychological hurdle of $9,000.
At press time, the number one cryptocurrency by market value is trading near $9,190, having faced rejection at $9,300 during the Asian trading hours. 
The pullback has neutralized the immediate bullish view put forward by a falling wedge breakout on the four-hour chart Wednesday. Further, it has established $9,310 – a lower high created May 24 – as strong resistance. 
If buyers can push prices past that threshold, a price rally to  $9,850 may be seen. That level is currently housing the upper end of the contracting triangle represented by trendlines connecting May 7 and 18 highs, and May 10 and 25 highs. 
The overall bias will stay neutral while the cryptocurrency is held withing the three-week-long narrowing price range on the daily chart. A breakout would imply a continuation of the rally from lows below $4,000 seen on March 13 and open the doors for a test of February high of $10,500.
Alternatively, a move below $8,760 would confirm a range breakdown and shift risk in favor of a deeper decline to support at $8,109 (May 10 low) and $7,900 (100-day average). 
Sign up to receive First Mover in your inbox, every weekday.Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Gemini has become the first U.S. crypto exchange and custodian to partner with Samsung, the companies announced Thursday. 
Samsung Blockchain users in the U.S. and Canada can now connect to Gemini’s mobile app to buy, sell and trade crypto after the companies built an integration between the two applications. 
With Gemini Custody, Samsung users can now also transfer their crypto into cold storage. 
“Crypto is not just a technology, it is a movement,” Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini, said in a press release. “We are proud to be working with Samsung to bring crypto’s promise of greater choice, independence and opportunity to more individuals around the world. Now, Samsung Blockchain Wallet customers can buy crypto in a simple, elegant and secure way on Gemini.”
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Electronics company LG joined Hedera Hashgraph’s Governing Council on Wednesday, becoming its 14th member.
The addition edges Hedera toward its council’s long-term goal: tap 39 hands-on node runners to govern its enterprise-grade public ledger, Hashgraph. Hashgraph is an alternative to blockchain platforms with buy-in from Google, IBM, Boeing and University College London among others. 
LG, a South Korean home appliance manufacturer, is the first such business and only the second based in Asia, after the Japan-based Nomura, to join.
Those attributes add a fresh perspective Hedera’s telecom-heavy and Asia-light council, said Hedera CEO Mance Harmon. He said members “vote on just about every part of the business” of the limited liability corporation.
“For that to be done well, we want to make sure that we have that really broad representation, not just across verticals but also by geography,” Harmon said. “LG is bringing diversity and further decentralization to the council in the way that we haven’t had before — that’s part of the excitement here.”
LG did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Harmon claims that the Hashgraph beta can handle 10,000 transactions per second – “way faster” than blockchain-based public ledgers running ethereum and bitcoin. It follows a proof-of stake model in which users pay via tokens for network services.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

After facing a heavy load of transactions earlier this month, bitcoin’s (BTC) network has returned to a more normal level, recent developments suggest. 
The total amount of fees paid to miners was 80 BTC as of Tuesday, down from its 11-month high of 201 BTC on May 21, according to the data provided by the blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode. It was at 57 BTC on May 3. 
The percentage of miner revenue from fees has also pulled back to 9.4% from the 28-month high of 21% registered on May 20. 
“The fall back in transaction fees are related to a normalized transaction activity and recent mining difficulty adjustment, which occurs around every two weeks,” said Wayne Chen, CEO of Interlapse Technologies and founder of virtual currency platform Coincurve. 
Users pay fees to miners for processing transactions on the blockchain. Miners also receive a fixed amount of BTC per block mined. That number halves every four years, most recently on May 11 of this year. 
See also: Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops by 6% in First Adjustment After Halving
Transaction fees are determined by the state of the network (how congested it is) and the size of the transaction. 
Bitcoin’s block size is 1 MB, which means miners can process only 1 MB worth of transactions per block mined roughly every 10 minutes. If the number of transactions exceeds 1 MB, the network gets congested and miners prioritize transactions with higher fees. 
Source: Bitcoin VisualsNetwork congestion, as represented by bitcoin’s memory pool or its collection of unconfirmed transactions on the blockchain, has been on a declining trend since topping out at the 28-month high of 267,608 on May 18 with a total block size of 78.5 MB, as per data source Bitcoin Visuals. As a result, transaction fees have come off highs seen on May 21. 
The memory pool exploded at the end of April and remained congested for a few days after halving as the programmed supply cut revved up investor interest, leading to an increase in the number of transactions. “This forced users to increase their mining fee, so they can jump ahead in line to have their transactions confirmed quicker,” said Chen. 
Block interval time dropsThe recent decline in fees could also be associated with the downward adjustment in the mining difficulty and the resulting drop in block interval time. 
The mining difficulty, a measure of how hard it is to mine blocks, was adjusted lower by 6% to 15.14 terahashes per second on May 20, as the hashrate, or the mining power dedicated to mine blocks fell following the halving. 
See also: The Last Word on Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption
The seven-day rolling average of bitcoin’s hashrate fell from 120 exahashes per second (EH/s) on May 11 to 90 EH/s to May 23. Moreover, halving doubled the cost of mining, forcing inefficient miners to shut down operations. 
When that happens, the time taken to mine blocks and confirm transactions rises, putting upward pressure on prices. Hence, the difficulty is decreased, enticing miners back to the blockchain. 
Source: GlassnodeWhile the seven-day average of hashrate is still hovering around 90 EH/s, the mean block interval fell to 11 minutes from the high of 14.3 minutes registered on May 17. The mean block time had jumped by nearly 150% immediately after halving, forcing miners to charge higher fees.  
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Digital asset custodian Kingdom Trust is offering investors a single retirement account for traditional and digital assets. 
Called Choice, the South Dakota-based custodian is offering a self-service retirement platform where investors can buy, sell or hold stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and digital assets in one tax-advantaged account, said Kingdom Trust CEO Ryan Radloff. Currently, fewer than 1% of the 100,000 retirement accounts for which Kingdom Trust provides custody have any digital assets as part of their portfolios. 
“Basically it’s a self-directed IRA with a web interface and mobile app to go back and forth between legacy and digital assets,” Radloff said.
Kingdom Trust built connections to crypto exchange Kraken to access digital assets and legacy brokers for traditional assets.
The launch comes after Kingdom Trust acquired Choice Holdings, a digital asset retirement company built by Radloff in the first quarter of 2020. In that same quarter, Choice trialed a version of direct crypto trading on the platform and saw an average of $13,000 per trade. Radloff was previously the CEO of crypto asset manager CoinShares.
“Most people have more investable discretionary dollars in retirement accounts than they do in brokerage accounts,” Radloff said. “Account balances are materially larger than at Kraken or a Coinbase, and the average purchase size is much larger than what you would see on an exchange.” 
With accounts being denominated in post-tax savings, clients can make larger trades without the tax burden, Radloff said. As a promotion, the company is offering the first 1,000 Choice members $62.50 of bitcoin upon opening an account.
“As someone calling out my fellow bitcoiners, we need to be focused on the U.S. retirement market,” Radloff said. “It’s important that we don’t just think about brokerage, but also savings and other parts of our financial lives.”
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

In a world where conventional wisdom has never been more up for grabs, one VC explains why there is opportunity in alternative narratives.
The battle to control narratives is the battle to shape how people understand the world around them. But the traditional gatekeepers of narratives – the media – have never had more competition to shape what is perceived as truth. 
In this episode, NLW speaks with Bedrock Capital founder Geoff Lewis about what it means to seek out opportunities in “narrative violations.” They also discuss: 
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

The equities markets far outpaced cryptocurrencies Tuesday on optimism that economic restrictions put in place to help slow the spread of the coronavirus are easing.
Bitcoin (BTC) poked its head above the $9,000 level briefly during morning trading in New York but fell to below $8,700 on selling. As of 20:35 UTC (4:35 p.m. ET), bitcoin was trading at $8,846, a loss of 1% over 24 hours.  The largest cryptocurrency by market cap is currently trading below its 10-day and 50-day technical indicator moving averages, a signal of bearish sentiment. 
“Bitcoin failed to break higher and has been bouncing off support in the $8,700 region,” said Max Boonen, CEO of cryptocurrency liquidity provider B2C2.
Bitcoin trading on Coinbase since May 24Source: TradingViewWhile bitcoin has been trending lower, Tuesday’s big winners are stocks.
The Nikkei 225 in Asia closed trading up 2.2%, with the index hitting a three-month high as Japan ended its pandemic-induced state of emergency measures. The FTSE Eurotop 100 index of Europe’s largest public companies by market cap was also in the green, although up less than a percent. The gain was also attributed to the easing of lockdowns in Europe. 
Read More: Paul Tudor Jones: Bitcoin Is Now the Macro Big Bet
In the U.S. the S&P 500 climbed 1.2% on the day, up 4% for the past month. 
“It’s probably the case that stocks are moving upward in response to increased reopening of the economy, which Wall Street may be taking as a positive sign,” said Danny Kim, head of revenue for exchange aggregator SFOX. “Bitcoin’s minor downward movement, on the other hand, probably has more to do with a loss of momentum than anything else.” 
Since starting the first week of May in tandem, bitcoin and the S&P 500 have been going in opposite directions.
Bitcoin and S&P 500 compared for MaySource: CoinDesk Research“Bitcoin is not demonstrating correlation to the equity markets at present, given a lot of the smart money is still sitting in stablecoins, particularly tether,” said Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank. Indeed, stablecoins are on the rise and tether is leading the way with a $9 billion market capitalization, according to its transparency page. The blockchain-based assets, pegged to the U.S. dollar, are helpful for traders to move balances quickly across different exchange platforms.
Stablecoin issuance per week since the start of 2020Source: CoinDesk ResearchThere is some looming concern bitcoin’s price will keep sliding downward due to changes in mining economics since the May 11 bitcoin halving. The once-in-four-year event for the Bitcoin network dropped daily new bitcoin generated to reward miners from roughly 1,800 to 900 BTC. At Tuesday’s bitcoin prices, that 900 BTC translates to around $8 million per day. 
Read More: Iranian President Calls for National Crypto Mining Strategy
Miners will have to sell a lot of that bitcoin for cash, according to Swissquote’s Thomas. “Chinese miners who are still running are barely profitable running old technology. They are surviving due to extremely cheap hydro electricity through the Chinese wet season, but will need to continue selling most of their monthly bitcoin gains to pay their operations expenses,” he said. “This will also start weighing on the market.”
Chinese miners make up about 65% of the total bitcoin mining power, according to data provided by pools and collected by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
Hashrate share provided by BTC.com, Poolin and ViaBTCSource: Cambridge UniversityDespite a lower crypto outlook, B2C2’s Boonen says his firm has seen professional traders pick up bitcoin at these prices, possibly because they see a value play. “Against the trend, we have seen light buying of BTC and selling of ETH across our franchise since the weekend,” he told CoinDesk. 
Other marketsDigital assets on CoinDesk’s big board are mostly in the red Tuesday. Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, lost 2.2% in 24 hours as of 20:35 UTC (4:35 p.m. ET). 
Ether trading on Coinbase since May 24Source: TradingViewThe biggest losers in 24-hour trading were ethereum classic (ETC) down 2%, stellar (XLM) slipping 1.4% and iota (IOTA) in the red 1.3%. The few winners on the day include lisk (LSK) gaining 4%, qtum (QTUM) in the green 1% and nem (XEM) climbing less than a percent. All price changes were as of 20:35 UTC (4:35 p.m. ET) Tuesday.
In the commodities sector, oil is up 1%, with the price for a barrel of crude at $34.21 as of press time. Gold experienced heavy selling early in the session, with the yellow metal slipping less than a percent on the day to $1,710 at the close of New York trading. 
Contracts-for-difference on gold since May 22Source: TradingViewRead More: Bitcoin Could Get a Boost From Central Bank Digital Currencies
U.S. Treasury bonds were mixed Tuesday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were up most on the 30-year, climbing 4.6%.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

 
South Korean tech giant Samsung has announced a new revolutionary turnkey security solution to secure cryptocurrency transactions on its smartphones and tablets.
 
Cryptocurrency transactions are one of the primary purposes of Samsung’s new Secure Element chip, which is expected to be available in Q3 2020. 
 
The solution involves a Secure Element (SE) chip S3FV9RR, which is Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (CC EAL) 6+ certified. The new SE chip along with enhanced software is designed to offer higher protection for tasks including booting, isolated storage, mobile payment, and other applications. 
 
Dongho Shin, the senior vice president of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics said, “In this era of mobility and contact-less interactions, we expect our connected devices, such as smartphones or tablets, to be highly secure so as to protect personal data and enable fintech activities such as mobile banking, stock trading, and cryptocurrency transactions. 
 
The new S3FV9RR chip is an enhanced turnkey following the first-generation solution (S3K250AF) announced in February. The new turnkey solution has twice the secure storage capacity and supports hardware-based root of trust (RoT), a secure boot, and device authentication that takes mobile security to the next level. 
 
Bitcoin support for blockchain phones
 
Samsung makes up 19 percent of global smartphone sales, selling over 300 million phones in the last year. Samsung’s Galaxy S10 range launched a year ago with the Blockchain Keystore feature offering the storage of cryptocurrencies and transactions for Ether and ERC-20 tokens. Samsung added Bitcoin to the Blockchain Keystore, on the blockchain-enabled smartphones.  
 
The added Bitcoin features to the developer kit are available on the S10 models, as well as the Note10 and Note10+ devices. Samsung is still in the process of developing a blockchain mainnet based on Ethereum and may release its own token in the near future.  
 
Image via Shutterstock

A senior figure at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes a digital currency backed by a central bank would open the door to much greater innovation in retail payments.
Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, the IMF’s deputy division chief in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said synthetic CBDCs – digital currencies backed by the liabilities of a central bank, but issued with the aid of a private entity – could provide citizens with a reliable means of payment that simultaneously leverage some of the key competitive advantages of the private sector.
A synthetic CBDC as outlined by Mancini-Griffoli is pretty much a public-private partnership. The idea is a licensed eMoney provider stores client funds in a central bank and, in return, receives a central bank liability they can package however they see fit into a publicly tradeable stablecoin that remains fully-backed by central bank reserves.
Speaking Tuesday morning on The Money Movement, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire’s new Youtube series, Mancini-Griffoli argued the key benefit offered by a synthetic CBDC, compared to a traditional CBDC – namely, where the central bank is responsible for the entire running of a digital currency – was that it made space for innovation.
Synthetic CBDCs – focusing on retail payments – enable central banks to promote monetary innovation within the confines of a safe and well-regulated environment, he said. In contrast, the traditional idea of a CBDC – which had pretty much “gone out of the door” in Mancini-Griffoli’s opinion – could become “very costly and very risky to the central bank, and it may deter innovation.”
“This public-private partnership [of a synthetic CBDC] is intended to conserve the competitive advantages of the private sector: to interface with clients and innovate, and the comparative advantage of the central bank: to regulate and provide trust,” he said.
See also: Central Banks Mull Creating a CBDC, but Not on a Blockchain: Survey
Other central banks have also mooted the possibility of a role for private companies. The Bank of England (BoE) has suggested there could be areas where a private entity would be far better placed to offer its own monetary solution for customers, as opposed to the central bank itself jumping in.
Even China, a major critic of the Facebook-planned Libra initiative, has carved out a role for a select group of private entities, the Agricultural Bank of China, say, as well as Alibaba and Tencent, to help in the issuance of its own digital yuan to Chinese citizens.
But the key aspect of a synthetic CBDC, so far as the IMF sees it, is that it delegates most of the fundamental functions of a CBDC to the private sector.
At the IMF-Swiss National Bank Conference in May 2019, Tobias Adrian, the IMF’s director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department – Mancini-Griffoli’s boss – said a notable advantage of a synthetic CBDC was it allowed the central bank to focus only on areas where it offers tangible value: namely, regulatory oversight and settlement.
By offering liabilities wholesale, all other functions that the private sector traditionally excels at, such as customer management, client screening, even the tech design of the CBDC itself, can effectively be outsourced, Adrian added.
In fact, there would be nothing to stop, under the IMF’s interpretation, multiple private companies all issuing digital currencies that are all backed by the same central bank liabilities, and effectively compete with one another.
See also: Sweden’s Central Bank Finally Embraces DLT, but Only in Simulation Mode
Still, there remain some unanswered questions. Chief among them is what the relationship between the public and private sector will ultimately look like. As Mancini-Griffoli highlighted: would a central bank ensure private entities undertake proper due diligence on clients, and would they provide input on what the tech design of the token itself would look like?
It remains hazy on “where do you draw the line of what the public sector does and what the private sector does,” he said.
Disclosure Read More The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

What is Novi?
 
Facebook has renamed its digital wallet, Calibra, as Novi. Calibra was the digital wallet that the social media giant has been building to access Libra digital currencies. 
 
 
In a blog post, the company explained that the new name was inspired by the Latin words “novus” and “via,” meaning “new” and “way.” The digital wallet company, a subsidiary under Facebook will now be named Novi Financial.
 
As previously reported by Blockchain.News, Libra has abandoned its original plan of a widely accessible permissionless digital currency aimed to solve financial inclusion issues, due to ongoing regulatory backlash. 
 
Libra was seen as a controversial project, especially in the eyes of regulators. Libra has then applied for a payment system license from the Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FINMA), to be able to allow the Libra payments system to be used publicly. 
 
One of the major updates of the Libra whitepaper is that it explicitly mentions the limits of what users are able to do on the network, including balance and transaction limits, and the network would only be accessible to regulated crypto firms in the beginning.
 
As stated on Novi’s website, the project is now moving towards providing individual stablecoins for major fiat currencies, including USD, EUR, and GBP. Previously, the Libra stablecoin aimed to be backed by a basket of global currencies, which also included the Singapore Dollar, and Japanese Yen. 
 
Despite changing the name of the digital wallet, Facebook says the mission for both Novi and Libra remains unchanged – enabling the transfer of money as easy as “sending a message.” 
 
A standalone Novi app is a part of the plan, as well as a version where it is integrated with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to allow consumers to send money to their contacts easily.
 
David Marcus, the Co-creator of what was once known as Calibra, now Head of Novi also explicitly mentioned in his tweets, that instead of creating a global, digital currency payment network, the focus has shifted to act as a wallet for stablecoins. Although Libra hopes to work with as many central banks as possible, for jurisdictions whose currency has not been added to Libra’s stablecoin backing will be unable to use it.
 
Binance’s take on Libra
 
Binance took a closer look at Libra’s recent whitepaper update and concluded that Facebook’s project could potentially disrupt the payment industry. 
 
There is an advantage of issuing widely-available programmable currency, which could lead to efficiency gains. As an optimistic comparison, Binance added, “Libra’s envisioned global payment system could do to the payment industry what SpaceX did to the space industry: shake the foundations of a well-established sector with high entry barriers. 
 
Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, was mentioned in the report as an industry leader in the space sector due to its significant step forward in improving speed for rocket journeys. 
 
The report also highlighted that most payment systems are operated by a central bank and of regional scope, as Libra could have an advantage has it could potentially have a wider reach of users. Focusing further on financial inclusion, Binance claims that Libra positions itself as a new financial framework to “enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.”
 
 
Image via Shutterstock