Libra is generating a continuous stream of news articles, with opinions, supporters and thrashers. Yesterday, Gerome Powell was the top VIP whose words supposedly caused a massive drop in all cryptocurrencies, including Libra’s contender Ripple whose price dropped from 0.395 down to almost 0.35 to finally bounce to 0.33.

Blockstack CEO, Muneeb Ali, Cautiously Optimistic about Facebook’s Libra. Blockstack is the star of the day. Today is launching the world’s earliest regulated token sale.

[…] this team is new. I actually know the leadership team there. I think they have really good intentions and they’re trying to do the right thing

Source: ccn.com

It seems Libra is such an exciting project for the Winklevoss brothers to patch their bruised relationship with Mark Zuckerberg. They have made billions from their early bitcoin investments; therefore, understandably, they were the first believers in Facebook’s new adventure into the land of the crypto world.

Libra is the first of many FANG companies to have a token project. Our prediction is in the next 24 months almost every FANG company will have a coin or be working on some sort of project.

The twin brothers are hoping to gain membership to the Libra Association, “We’re definitely looking at it in earnest and we’re excited about the project.”

Source:bitcoinist.com

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell has joined the club of financial authorities which stated that Libra’s concerns must be thoroughly addressed. The Chairman said that the FED had met with Facebook’s representatives in the previous months and, also, that he has set up a working group to analyse all unanswered aspects of the project.

Libra raises serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection, financial stability

He also stated that the project “could not go forward” without Facebook answering satisfactorily all the questions requested by the regulators.

source: cnbc.com

An article by bitcoinist.com discusses Facebook’s ability to collect data about transactions of Libra users. That comes after a letter by Calibras director, David Marcus, in response to the US Senate Banking Committee’s open letter.

Answering about privacy and consumer protection, he implied that the identity of the user wouldn’t be linked to transactions registered on the blockchain. But he added:

“Regulators of Calibra and other digital wallet services can require them to collect information about the identity and activities of their users and make such information available to law enforcement and regulatory agencies,”

Then, in a question regarding consumer financial information, he stated that Facebook subsidiary Facebook Payments Inc would be the company handling the transactions.

“As Facebook is the platform on which these transactions take place, Facebook Inc. also collects data related to the transaction (eg. purchase, merchant, transaction amount, date, time) similar to any other commerce platform.”

That raised concerns in Reddit crypto forums and has been heavily commented.

Although it seems that Thailand is a focus market of the Libra project, according to an article by cointelegraph.com, Facebook’s Libra may face legal difficulties to enter the Thai market.

Fiscal Policy Officer Suarporn Manason stated that Libra likely would not fit under the Bank of Thailand’s Currency Act.

“The cryptocurrency does not fit under the Bank of Thailand’s Currency Act because it does not have the characteristics of legal tender as stipulated by law. These characteristics refer to a banknote or coin having value in baht or being identifiable as an object or note used to pay debts or exchange with other currencies in accordance with the law.”

Another official commented about the likelihood of the Bank of Thailand issuing its own digital currency before Libra could be mass-adopted.

source: cointelegraph.com