Top Stories This Week: Bitcoin Bombshell, Libra Rivals, Twitter Spats: Hodler’s Digest, Aug. 19–25

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.

Binance reveals “Venus” — its own project to rival Facebook’s Libra

With Facebook tangled up in regulatory tape and putting Libra on ice, others are seizing the chance to leapfrog the social network and launch their own stablecoins. Walmart’s at it, the People’s Bank of China’s at it, and Binance is now throwing its hat into the ring. The crypto exchange says Venus is an open blockchain project that will focus on developing localized stablecoins worldwide.

Binance believes it’s in a strong position because of its existing public chain technology and wide user base. The ambitious venture will put the exchange toe to toe with Mark Zuckerberg’s tech behemoth — and although Venus could end up enjoying a headstart in the sprint to launch a stablecoin, Facebook will easily be able to recoup lost ground when it launches. Or, er, if it launches.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp looks to launch digital payments in Indonesia

Even as Libra languishes, Zuckerberg is continuing to pursue digital payments far away from meddling politicians in the U.S. Over in Indonesia, Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is in early stage talks with fintech firms and a state-owned bank to support payments through digital wallets in the region. The tech giant has gingerly confirmed that conversations are currently taking place but refused to share any more specifics.

Sources told Reuters that negotiations are currently underway with the transportation booking service Go-Jek, mobile payments provider DANA, fintech startup OVO and state-owned bank Mindri, which operates a digital wallet service. A service is expected to launch in 2020 — that said, this was when Libra was supposedly going to be unveiled to the masses.

Bitcoin dominance is actually above 90%, new research suggests

In news that’s likely to send a shiver down the spine of altcoin evangelists, new research suggests that Bitcoin’s (BTC) true market dominance may have been drastically underestimated. While mainstream crypto data aggregators claim the world’s biggest digital currency has a 70% slice of the market, analysts at Arcane Research believe BTC dominance is actually more than 90%. It says market capitalization is a “meaningless measure” when liquidity isn’t taken into account, and boffins used trading volume in order to make their recalculations. This doesn’t look good for other cryptocurrencies hoping to compete with Bitcoin — and it could have ramifications for investors, not to mention those developing infrastructure for payments.


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