Bitcoin Surpasses 1M Daily Active Users, Facebook Launches Libra, Ripple Partners with MoneyGram, PwC Releases Crypto Auditing Software

This week was absolutely dominated by Facebook and its announcement of Libra - a new digital currency (a stablecoin, to be more precise) to dominate the world of payments and commerce.

Yet, there were also other interesting news and developments in the blockchain and crypto space. About these and more, in the newest Weekly Blockchain & Crypto Digest.

Bitcoin Surpasses One Million Daily Active Addresses

Bitcoin surpassed one million daily active addresses on June 14, according to blockchain statistics website CoinMetrics.

Chase thinks the Bitcoin industry has changed considerably since 2017, citing an increase in institutional interest and the high volume of bitcoin futures transactions.

Last week, the official Twitter account of Coinbase Custody, a cryptocurrency custody firm aimed at institutions, revealed that it holds $1.3 billion in assets under custody and expects to hit $2 billion AUC soon.

Ripple to Invest Up to $50M in MoneyGram Following New Partnership

Major money transmission network MoneyGram has entered into a strategic partnership with blockchain-based payments firm Ripple.

As part of the two-year agreement, the two firms will become partners in cross-border payments and foreign exchange settlements with digital assets. As part of the agreement, MoneyGram will be able to draw up to $50 million from Ripple in exchange for equity.

MoneyGram will use Ripple’s xRapid liquidity product, which allows money to be sent in one currency and instantly settled in the destination currency. In using Ripple’s XRP token for such transfers, xRapid can purportedly settle such transactions faster than with fiat currencies or other major digital assets. MoneyGram Chairman and CEO Alex Holmes said:

Through Ripple’s xRapid product, we will have the ability to instantly settle funds from U.S. dollars to destination currencies on a 24/7 basis, which has the potential to revolutionize our operations and dramatically streamline our global liquidity management.

According to its website, MoneyGram is the second largest payments firm in the world, operating in over 200 countries. Much of MoneyGram’s business is in the global remittances market, the value of which is estimated to be worth $600 billion.

In March, India’s Federal Bank (IFB), a commercial private bank, partnered with Ripple to use its network for cross-border remittances. The partnership was part of an initiative to apply new technologies to IFB’s remittances network, having also launched two platforms in the United Arab Emirates for making payments to India.

Earlier this month, Ripple launched a Brazilian office with the goal of expanding across Latin America. 

Facebook Releases Cryptocurrency White Paper for Libra Currency

Social media giant Facebook has released the white paper for its long-awaited cryptocurrency and blockchain-based financial infrastructure project on June.

According to the paper, Facebook’s global stablecoin, dubbed “libra,” will operate on the native and scalable Libra blockchain, and be backed by a reserve of assets ostensibly “designed to give it intrinsic value” and mitigate volatility fluctuations. 

These assets consist of a basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities that will be held in the Libra Reserve for every Libra that is issued.

The new cryptocurrency will be governed by a not-for-profit, Switzerland-based consortium — the “Libra Association” — which counts Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, Stripe, eBay, Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz and Uber among its founding members.

Facebook supposedly plans to expand the association to around 100 members by the time of Libra’s launch in the first half of 2020. The white paper notes that:

While final decision-making authority rests with the association, Facebook is expected to maintain a leadership role through 2019. Facebook created Calibra, a regulated subsidiary, to ensure separation between social and financial data and to build and operate services on its behalf on top of the Libra network.

The Libra Association is itself governed by the Libra Association Council. The council’s members initially are the founding members, each of which runs a validator node on the network and was required to make a minimum investment of $10 million to seal the position. Each $10 million investment secures an entity one vote on the council, per Facebook.

Facebook has also revealed the release of the Libra Investment Token — distinct from its global user-oriented cryptocurrency libra — which can be purchased or distributed as dividends to the association’s founding members and accredited investors.

As libra is not technically pegged to any given national fiat currency, the white paper states that users will not always be able to redeem the token for a fixed amount of fiat, although Facebook claims that the reserve assets have been chosen so as to minimize volatility.

While the reserve assets are held by “a geographically distributed network of custodians” in order to secure decentralization, the reserve is managed by the association itself, which is the only party able to mint and destroy the coin.

New libra are minted once authorized resellers have purchased the coins from the association with enough fiat to fully back their value, and burned when authorized resellers sell the token back to the association in exchange for the underlying assets. Moreover, the white paper states:

Since authorized resellers will always be able to sell Libra coins to the reserve at a price equal to the value of the basket, the Libra Reserve acts as a ‘buyer of last resort.

Facebook further notes that the software that implements the Libra blockchain is open source in order to create an interoperable ecosystem of financial services and broaden inclusion.

Previous reports had indicated that the coin will facilitate payments across Facebook’s various platforms including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, giving the new coin potential exposure to a combined 2.7 billion users each month.

??All You Need to Know About Facebook's Upcoming Cryptocurrency??

IBM Announces New Multicloud Update to Blockchain

IBM has announced upgrades to its Blockchain Platform on June 18. The new IBM Blockchain Platform will reportedly be able to run on multiple cloud networks, such as major tech corporation Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS).

This is apparently the main upgrade over its previous iteration, which was available solely through IBM’s cloud. The multicloud platform will be available via Kubernetes, a container program that will enable users to scale their blockchain networks as needed.

One of the main upshots of its new multicloud framework is that IBM Blockchain Platform 2.0 that IBM boasts on its website is its interoperability. According to the website, the multicloud platform lets the blockchain participants provide governance across multiple cloud networks, even those with differing privacy environments.

IBM Blockchain CTO Gari Singh commented on this cross-network advantage, saying:

We want to bring on XYZ company, but XYZ has a contract with Azure or AWS or Oracle,” he said. “How do we allow those guys to connect up a peer [node] to join the network and how can you support that?” [...] We can now actually leverage all the great things that are in Hypeledger Fabric, and we can support you wherever you need to be. And we can also help to support networks that want to work with IBM, but they have other members that don’t.

IBM’s platform is a variation on the open source blockchain platform Hyperledger Fabric, which is fundamentally the same but with the addition of ease-of-access tools provided by IBM. The tools reportedly streamline the process of launching a permissioned network, assisting with necessary tasks such as assigning governance and creating consensus mechanisms.

Big Four Auditing Firm PwC Releases Cryptocurrency Auditing Software

Big Four auditing firm PwC announced the release of a cryptocurrency auditing software solution in a press release published on June 19.

Per the release, the tool newly added to PwC’s Halo auditing suite can be used to “provide assurance services for entities engaging in cryptocurrency transactions.” The firm claims that, with the new addition, the Halo suite permits PwC to provide independent evidence of private-public key pairing (to establish crypto asset ownership), and gather information about transactions and balances from blockchains.

PwC further notes that it is already employing the new tool to support audits of clients involved with cryptocurrencies, and assisting companies for which the firm is not the auditor in implementing processes and controls necessary to obtain assurance reports from their auditors. Still, the company notes that the tool is not without its limitations:

Our ability to audit an entity engaged in cryptocurrency activities is very much influenced by our client’s control environment, and at this stage, by the breadth of tokens supported by our Halo software. These considerations will be key when determining whether we are comfortable to accept an audit engagement.

Lastly, it is specified in the announcement that the new addition to the Halo suite supports bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), bitcoin gold (BTG), bitcoin diamond (BCD), litecoin (LTC), ether (ETH), OAX (ERC20 token) and XRP.

Also at the end of March, PwC competitor and big four auditing firm Deloitte announced that it was testing data management on the Ethereum blockchain with three Irish banks.

Don't forget to ??subscribe?? to my monthly series and always stay up-to-date:

?? Month in FinTech

?? Month in Blockchain & Crypto

P.S. You might enjoy my earlier pieces as well:

?? Following Dirty Money

?? The Biggest Deals in FinTech History are Taking Place NOW

?? IOTA is Climbing Back

?? Lithuania's 10 Years Challenge - from Developing Country to European FinTech Hub

?? Bitcoin is NOT a Currency, and Never Will Be

***

About: I am a business developer, sales professional, FinTech strategist, as well as Cryptocurrency and Blockchain enthusiast. I'm highly passionate about Financial Technology and Digital Innovation, and strongly believe that it will change the world for the better. Apart from my daily job at a global payments startup where I'm leading company's expansion into Europe , I'm an active member of FinTech community and a TechFin evangelist.

If you've enjoyed this piece, don't hesitate to press like, comment what you think and share the article with others. Let's spread the knowledge together!

For more, hit the subscribe button, follow me on LinkedIn & Instagram. I'm building the best community the social world has ever seen!????