Facebook's New Cryptocurrency, Libra, Gets Big Backers

Facebook has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Uber to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year, according to a WSJ report. From the report: The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin, which will be pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid the wild swings that have dogged other cryptocurrencies, they said. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Facebook was recruiting backers to help start the crypto-based payments system and was seeking to raise as much as around $1 billion for the effort. In the works for more than a year, the secretive project revolves around a digital coin that its users could send to each other and use to make purchases both on Facebook and across the internet. Talks with some of the partners are ongoing, and the group's eventual membership may change, the people added.

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