Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Altcoins continue explosive bull run while Bitcoin stalls Not too long ago, Bitcoin (BTC) diehards were warning that altcoins are dead. “The altcoin phenomenon is finished,” RT host Max Keiser said in July. But, based on this week’s performance, the rumors of their death may have been greatly exaggerated. In recent days, Bitcoin has been …

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had dinner with a handful of United States lawmakers, where he was met with intense scrutiny of Facebook’s proposed Libra stablecoin project. Zuckerberg grilled by Democratic lawmakers According to an article by the Washington Post on Sept. 19, Democratic Senator Mark R. Warner said Zuckerberg heard “consistent concerns about privacy, concerns around vile content and how it came to be dealt with.” The U.S. senator said specific questions were asked about Facebook’s plans to launch Libra, a cryptocurrency that has seen plenty of scrutiny in recent months from policymakers around the world. Warner added: “One of the …

For the cryptosphere, August was marked by the hotly debated announcements of world giants regarding the releases of international cryptocurrencies. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced the imminent release of a national digital currency, Walmart began developing its own blockchain, Binance launching the Venus project, and Pavel Durov’s TON finally shared its release date. The race was also joined by Facebook, which kept the development of its cryptocurrency a secret until the very last second. At the moment, the company is actively hiring specialists who can convince financial regulators to give the Libra coin the right to exist — …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Facebook to work ‘however long it takes’ to win over regulators on Libra Mark Zuckerberg turned on the charm offensive this week in an attempt to reassure governments and central banks that his social network is taking their concerns about Libra to heart. On a conference call, he told investors that Facebook has changed — …

A United States Democratic congressman has claimed “Mark Zuckerberg is sending a friend request to oligarchs, drug dealers, human traffickers and terrorists” by launching Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency. In a combative tweet on July 17, Brad Sherman described Libra as the “Zuck Buck” and he accused the Facebook CEO of deliberately attempting to circumvent America’s anti-money laundering laws. Sherman’s post was accompanied by a mock Facebook screenshot that showed Zuckerberg sending drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman a friend request. Underneath, the billionaire’s other friends are listed as the Palestinian group Hamas (which the U.S. and the EU designate as a …

Intellectual of the innovative industry, innovator of the concept of intellectuality, experimentator with technologies and educator by dedication, before co-founding Wikipedia in 2001, Larry Sanger studied and taught philosophy, being interested especially in epistemology — i.e., the science of knowledge. It was in college that he started thinking of the internet as a potential way of decentralizing knowledge. His early project in this regard was a web forum for discussions between tutors and students, who could thus communicate outside the usual academic environment. Sanger explained: “The thing that drives me forward is all of the possibilities that the internet makes …

Facebook’s unveiling of its Libra cryptocurrency has generated a lot of attention in the financial world, as well as in the crypto space. So far, the company has announced that its Libra blockchain network will be launched in 2020 and backed by a separate entity, the Libra Foundation. The cryptocurrency is set to enable users to make faster and cheaper international payments online, using platforms such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. The Libra currency Just like any other cryptocurrency, Libra is set to have its own wallet called Calibra. Users would be able to send and receive Libra through this …

The United States House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services requested Facebook and its partners to stop the development of the Libra stablecoin. In a July 2 letter addressed to Facebook CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and David Marcus, and COO Sheryl Sandberg, the lawmakers request that Facebook and its partners immediately agree to a moratorium on the development of Libra and its dedicated Calibra wallet. The committee claims that the project may lead ”to an entirely new global financial system that is based out of Switzerland and intended to rival U.S. monetary policy and the dollar.” The committee notes that it …

Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, published on June 25 an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, advising to back Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra with gold. In the letter, Forbes strongly encouraged Facebook’s crypto initiative, emphasizing Libra’s potential to become one of the greatest inventions in the world, which eventually “could replace the U.S. dollar as the global currency.” At the same time, to become “one of history’s truly seminal creations,” Libra has to be backed by gold as a basic condition, Forbes argued in the letter, opposing it to the current Facebook’s plan to back the coin by a …

Over the past few months, it appeared that Telegram has been comfortably leading the clandestine race between major social platforms that have been quietly working on their native crypto tokens, with its Telegram Open Network (TON) making strides toward its October 2019 launch deadline. The latest avalanche of news from Facebook, however, makes this lead look less convincing, as it becomes apparent that the social media giant’s blockchain project is also well underway. After a series of indirect cues suggesting that Facebook’s long-rumored fintech initiative is in motion, a massive breakthrough came with a detailed report from The Information, which …

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg considered the ramifications of blockchain-based authorization of user data during an interview with Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain on Feb. 20. During a discussion covering such topics as the future of technology and society, Zuckerberg noted that he “think[s] about the work we [Facebook] are a decentralizing force in the world.” Zuckerberg said that people of his generation got into technology because “it gives individuals power, and is not massively centralizing.” Zuckerberg mentioned that he was considering a potential blockchain use case by which users could have control over their data, adding “Basically, you …

It has been an interesting time for Facebook and its relationship with cryptocurrencies ever since they made a precedent setting move to ban adverts on their platform that had anything to do with cryptocurrency in January this year. The social media giant has since updated their policies to once again allow cryptocurrencies to advertise on Facebook, although it has continued its ban on ICOs. This move is being seen as a positive for the cryptocurrency space, which has earned back a major advertising platform on which it can reach a large number of users. However, behind the scenes, all is …