THE TIMES 18/JUN/2019

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CRYPTO NOTE

The daily view from our desk

THE TIMES 18/JUN/2019

“US ACCUSES IRAN OF ‘NUCLEAR EXTORTION’ AS GULF TENSIONS ESCALATE”

How can we not talk much about Libra, a newly-detailed, but not surprising, cryptocurrency developed, but not owned, by Facebook? Due to the news embargo, a couple of news media already wrote — almost — everything that is there to be written beforehand! Meanwhile, the popular Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp has also annotated its 26-page whitepaper. Anyway, you can find our usual must-read curated selection in today’s “can’t miss” section below. What else, then?

Well, in addition to what we already detailed yesterday about the bullish impact of Facebook’s Libra in cryptoasset adoption, we believe Crypto Twitter is missing three things related to other cryptoasset giants: Telegram, Ethereum, and Ripple — further explained in the section below. All-in-all, we believe what matters is that the open-source mammoth is clearly attacking the established banks, the established regulators, and even the established cryptoassets. Even if it’s consensual we can’t trust Facebook, this will force change into our systems.

THE TIMES 18/JUN/2019

“HEDGHEHOGS GET A HELPING HAND TO CROSS BUSIEST ROADS”

So, what are the three things we haven’t seen covered by anyone else so far? Firstly, Ripple announced yesterday it will invest up to $50 million to rescue MoneyGram, a falling money transfer service — and that’s bearish for XRP. Everyone knew Facebook was announcing Libra today, and Ripple still decided to release the announcement at this time — knowing it would be obfuscated by the weight of competing likes. After all, Libra is not attacking coins meant to moon — like Bitcoin; it’s attacking coins meant to be used as a global means of exchange.

Secondly, Ethereum’s moat is its developer ecosystem and that’s finally under threat — because Libra will also support smart contracts! After all, how many grants can the Ethereum Foundation continue to issue out to incentivise the large majority of developers who are not attracted by the cypherpunk ethos? And why did it also decide to announce today they had partnered with HyperLedger — an open-source blockchain project led by the Linux Foundation but backed by industry giants? To make sure development doesn’t stall?

Lastly, and speculatively, the project’s timeline curiously followed an equivalent one led by Telegram — and this is positive for Telegram and for its own blockchain TON, which should launch in October. Why? While the favourite chatting app of the cryptosphere is not a direct competitor to Facebook, it is to its two most engaging apps: Whatsapp and Messenger. Note the first rumours about TON surged in December 2017. Indeed, Facebook’s secretive remittances-focused project was only first leaked in December 2018, but it created its formal blockchain team in May 2018 — one month after Telegram completed its second private sale round. Both projects are fighting China’s WeChat payment infrastructure, but can Libra — which won’t launch before 2020 — catch-up with TON’s Gram? Surely, but they can work like Coke and Pepsi.

WHAT YOU CAN’T MISS TODAY

DON’T LEAVE FOR THE WEEKEND WHAT YOU SHOULD READ TODAY

▪ To begin, hats off to the whole Alphaville team, a free blog from the Financial Times, who beat the great team from The Block in analysing Libra with their excellent “Breaking the Zuck Buck” series. We recommend their cheat sheet.

▪ Nevertheless, The Block’s analysts were also spot on — especially Frank Chaparro’s scoop explaining the Libra cryptocurrency and the exclusive Libra Investment Token; as well as Larry Cermak’s op-ed debunking “the Libra FUD”.

▪ It’s also worth it to check the original technical (white)paper of the “not-really-a-blockchain-based” cryptocurrency, as well as the neat developer website. Note that the project promises to become permissionless within five years. Let’s see.

▪ Moreover, if you don’t like to click, do understand the difference between Libra and Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary, well-explained by David Marcus here.

▪ Also for the skimmers, if you missed the reference to Jameson Lopp’s thoughts about the whitepaper in our commentary section, then you can read them here.

▪ However, there’s one thing that Jameson missed: the open-source project is only decentralised up to a certain point, as Peter Todd notes. Well, it’s not!

▪ If you’re still with us, the good team behind Binance Research made a great summary as well as an in-depth review of the Facebook-led open-source project.

▪ To conclude the heavy Libra content, we just recommend reading Jerry Brito’s concise summary of the differences between Libra and a regular stablecoin.

▪ Lastly, and for the Bitcoin bulls, let’s close with Josh Olszewicz’s fresh price analysis, which argues BTC can’t break $13k soon. Remember #33kbyJuly?

QUOTE OF THE DAY

AND TO OVERRIDE BANKS, SHEEPCOINS, GOOGLE, APPLE, AMAZON, AND PERHAPS THE WORLD

“Libra is nothing more than a brazen attempt to override national monetary sovereignty by creating a global-scale Federal Reserve equivalent — within which Facebook’s dominance is veiled by the cunning use of buzzwords like blockchain, DLT, decentralisation and cryptocurrency”

• By Izabella Kaminska