Will the State/Regulators block non government stablecoins to retain their monopoly?

Here is our pick of the 3 most important Stablecoin news stories during the week:

The big news this week was Telegram, the popular chat service which raised something like USD $1.7b at the peak of the halcyon ICO days, announced that after a protracted legal battle with the SEC, it has killed their TON Token project.  Pavel Durov the CEO and Founder at Telegram announced the shut down via his blog here What-Was-TON-And-Why-It-Is-Over

More on that below, but it raises the question for would be entrepreneurs, that even if you do consult expensive lawyers and follow their advice through a legal process will the State just squash you anyway?  Therefore, is the Facebook/Libra project ultimately doomed?  Some very interesting comments from the ECB’s Yves Mersch this week where he essentially said that the ECB is not putting in place a Central Bank Digital Currency (CDBC) but preparing itself in case it has to!  This article in Fintech Bulletin gives a good overview of the ECB’s and Yves’s position.  An ECB digital currency – a flight of fancy?

• In this Cointelegraph article: Pantera (Silicon Valley based Crypto VC/Hedge Fund) Founding Partner, Dr. Steven Waterhouse, says out loud what some of us have been fearing. “The idea that some random startups are going to build their own stablecoins, perhaps with hundreds of millions of installs of a messenger client, whether it’s Facebook or Telegram or someone else, potentially challenge the sort of central bank digital currency or existing central bank currencies? […] That’s got to be triggering for regulators. So I think that’s why we’ve seen such a strong reaction to both Facebook Libra and also Telegram.”  Pantera Capital Founder Says Regulators ‘Triggered’ by Grams and Libra

• SEC v TON:  Did Telegram stuff it up or is the SEC killing potentially valuable innovation?  Respected Crypto Lawyer Preston Byrne in this Coindesk article argues that the project had some fundamental problems from the very beginning.    Telegram’s TON Was Built on Sand. Its Failure Isn’t All Bad For Crypto  

• Libra/Facebook: Then in an interesting development that is going in the other direction, the State got behind Libra when the Singapore Government owned sovereign wealth fund, Temasek announced that it is backing the project.  This Reuters report provides plenty of background on both Temasek and the progress of the Libra project.  Singapore’s Temasek joins Facebook-backed Libra project

In closing, in one place where we know the State has a monopoly and is very transparent that it intends to maintain it,  work is continuing at a rapid pace.  This excellent explainer of the People’s Bank Of China (PBOC) project by the South China Morning Post will keep you up to date. What is China’s cryptocurrency alternative sovereign digital currency?

New readers can read 3 free articles.  To  become a member with full access to all that Daily Fintech offers,  the cost is just US$143 a year (= $0.39 per day or $2.75 per week). For less than one cup of coffee you get a week full of caffeine for the mind.