According to the Wall Street Journal, Visa and MasterCard are getting cold feet about helping build payment infrastructure for Facebook’s Libra project. The Wall Street Journal said that a number of financial partners were starting to back away from Libra because of regulatory concerns. This comes on the heels of a September 9 meeting in Switzerland in which financial regulators from across the globe questioned members of Libra. It also follows the skepticism expressed by Congress in July, during hearings with Facebook, in which the government expressed numerous reservations regarding regulation. Here’s the Truth Nobody Will Admit There’s a lot going on that is left unsaid in the media about Libra, and one has to read between the lines and said what is really going on. This all has to

In the world of cryptocurrency and bitcoins, which I consider to be a bubble worse than the Dutch tulip craze of the 1600s, there could only be one thing worse. That would be saying something because as I’ve argued repeatedly here at CCN, bitcoin is vapor. There is nothing to back it, it isn’t money, there is no rhyme or reason for the price that it trades at in the market, and is nothing more than gambling in a casino that has worse odds than Las Vegas. While supporters of bitcoin scream and yell at me on a regular basis for my opinion, nobody ever seems to be able to muster an actual argument to challenge my assertions. So what could possibly be worse than bitcoin being as ridiculous as it already is? How about North Korea deciding that it is going to create its own cryptocurrency? A

By CCN.com: As if Facebook didn’t have enough privacy issues, the company now confirms that it has been transcribing the audio chats of its users for quite some time.
Facebook Claims It Wasn’t Being Sneaky
Facebook claims that the only conversations that were transcribed were from those users who selected that option in the Messenger app.

Facebook also claims that it was on for the sole purpose of making sure the transcription application was performing properly.
Needless to say, it is difficult to believe anything Facebook has to say on this or any other privacy issue.
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Even worse, third-parties were used to transcribe the audio, but this information was never disclosed to users.
Another Blow to Libra
This is not going to help Facebook in regards to the Libra

By CCN.com: Owners of “whale wallets” scooped up 450,000 BTC as the bitcoin market hit bear-market lows in late 2018. It appears whales now control 25% of all BTC.Is this good or bad for bitcoin?Whales are smart moneyThese private, non-institutional buyers decided an 85 percent decline was a buying opportunity.The market sent BTC prices higher.Now they hold bitcoin, hoping to exploit the law of supply and demand. By hoarding coins, liquidity dries up, theoretically forcing prices higher.[embedded content]Been here beforeThis is the same tactic used by DeBeers, the UK-based diamond cartel to control prices in the diamond market for more than 100 years.DeBeers hoarded an otherwise unexceptional mineral, started its own hype machine that diamonds were amazing things everyone must-have, the