France vows to block Facebook’s Libra in Europe

France has vowed to block development of Facebook’s planned cryptocurrency, Libra, on the grounds that it threatens “monetary sovereignty.”

French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, speaking at an OECD conference on cryptocurrencies, said: "I want to be absolutely clear: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil."

Commenting on the most recent development, Libra communications chief Dante Disparte told Decrypt, "In the nearly three months since the intent to launch the Libra project was announced, we have become the world's most scrutinized fintech effort." He added: "We welcome this scrutiny and have deliberately designed a long launch runway to have these conversations, educate stakeholders and incorporate their feedback in our design." 

Disparte also acknowledged that the stakes were high, saying, "the comments today from France's economy and finance minister further underscore the importance of our ongoing work with regulatory bodies and leadership around the world...the Libra Association and its members are committed to working with regulatory authorities to achieve a safe, transparent, and consumer-focused implementation of the Libra project. We recognize that blockchain is an emerging technology, and that policymakers must carefully consider how its applications fit into their financial system policies."

TruStory’s radical attempt to make money out of crypto's love of mud-slinging

The crypto universe is full of lofty claims: Bitcoin grandees will tell you “only the one true coin will survive,” ICO and STO purveyors will shill you from dawn to dusk. And let’s not forget all the conspiracy theorists lurking in the malodorous but well-populated corners of Twitter and Reddit who are all too willing to tell you just how wrong you really are. 

Can an emphasis on debate, a snazzy new interface, and some tokens change crypto’s mind? Truth will tell.

Here are the biggest stories in the cryptoverse:

• US politician uses crypto to buy weed.    
• Iranian crypto miners offered tax exemption.
• UK football club puts Bitcoin logo on its kit, accepts BTC. 
• US treasury tells crypto: Get rid of shady finance.

ConsenSys joins Hyperledger to help build enterprise blockchains

What you need to know

Ethereum-focused development firm ConsenSys has joined Hyperledger as a premium member. Hyperledger—run by the Linux Foundation—is an open-source project focused on open-source technologies, particularly around enterprise blockchains.

Joe Lubin, founder of ConsenSys (which funds Decrypt), will join Hyperledger’s governing board as its 22nd member.

Additionally, PegaSys, the protocol engineering team at ConsenSys, will submit its Ethereum client—a version of Ethereum—to Hyperledger. The client will be renamed from Pantheon to Hyperledger Besu, and will be the 15th project in the Hyperledger catchment.
 

Why it's important

By joining Hyperledger, ConsenSys will help to form standards for enterprise-grade blockchains to create consistency across the industry. It will also encourage interoperability—the ability for blockchains to connect to one another—to bring the sector together, and making it more intertwined. It will now have access to Hyperledger’s global community.

The cost of running a failed IEO

We now know that “initial exchange offerings” are doing terribly. Just last week, research firm Longhash found that the briefly insurgent funding mechanism—which saw hundreds of crypto startups run token sales from the “launchpads” of willing exchanges—has yielded returns of around minus 80 percent for the thousands of investors that took part in the offerings.
 

What fewer people know, however, is how much these failures cost the token-issuing companies in the first place. After speaking with several companies and reviewing multiple IEO prospectuses, we found that they can be costly. While the larger, more established exchanges charge no upfront fees, the other, lower-tier exchanges demand payments that can exceed tens of thousands of dollars. And for those who want their IEOs seen by more than just a handful of investors, projects have to pony up additional fees for external marketing, hemorrhaging yet more thousands. 

Read more here.