The most widely used messaging application in Japan with more than 80 million users is now waiting to receive approval from Japan's Financial Services Agency as early as June - and launch a crypto exchange. As Bloomberg reported, Line Messenger launched a crypto exchange called "BITBOX" in Singapore last year but now plans to do the same in Japan. BitMax, which is Line's new crypto exchange that awaits approval from local financial authorities, is in the news of many best cryptocurrency news sites. BITBOX has disallowed Japanese users from trading on it since the launch. A lot of big financial institutions in the world as well as technology conglomerates and corporations have introduced their plans to enter the crypto market. Line Messenger is one of them, following the steps of Facebook with its Libra Association (which is actually a partnership with Visa, Mastercard, Uber, Lyft and Booking Holdings) as a project that will be backed by a reserve of real assets such as reserve currencies. The altcoin news now show that the planned launch of BitMax by Line Messenger presents a new narrative - this time from a large-scale conglomerate to facilitate the growth of the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector. The CEO of Line Messenger, Takeshi Idezawa, spoke during the launch of BITBOX and said:

"LINE has built its reputation on providing a great social experience for our users, and now we intend to bring that know-how to the world of digital tokens with our BITBOX exchange. With BITBOX, we intend to have an exchange that is easier to use, while also ensuring we provide extremely strong levels of security."

As he also mentioned, BitMax will use the exact same technology that is used in BITBOX. His statement made the latest cryptocurrency news now that Line is expected to obtain a license and operate BitMax in Japan in the near term. The launch of a crypto exchange by Line Messenger, which is a major tech giant in Japan, definitely restores a lot of confidence - especially by local investors and users following the high profile security breaches and the names associated with them (Coincheck and Zaif). Native exchanges may definitely be the future of a new crypto revolution - and Line Messenger could definitely be pioneering it.

As the latest cryptocurrency news show, Amazon is thinking of creating its own cryptocurrency such as Facebook's Libra in several years time, according to a senior executive and their plans. All of this was revealed by the Amazon Pay VP a conference on June 10. In fact, it was the Fortune Brainstorm Finance 2019 event which hosted Patrick Gaulthier, who is the vice president of Amazon Pay. He said that the kind of value transfer system that Facebook unveiled this week was probably a step too far in the current climate.

“It’s fresh, it’s speculative; at Amazon, we don’t really deal with the speculative, in the now,” the Amazon Pay VP said.

Facebook continues to cause a stir in cryptocurrency, financial and government circles after the first publicity material around Libra went live. Billed as a network that is designed to allow users to send money like messages or pictures on social media, this scheme has attracted a lot of talks because of its technical setup and roadmap. Some lawmakers have already gone as far as to request the company halt development altogether. The altcoin news also show that there is a potential alternative to fiat money and central banks. Many commentators have suggested that some governments such as Russia, will seek to block Facebook and any other product supporting Libra. As of recently, the United States Senate Banking Committee revealed that it will hold a dedicated hearing on the cryptocurrency next month, as we reported in our coming altcoin news. As the Amazon Pay VP noted, the company has so far steered clear of many cryptocurrency implementation despite the various rumors in recent years. Depending on the future evolvement of the space, the retail giant may reconsidered the Libra-style crypto option in the mid to long run. The cryptocurrency community honestly hopes that this will be the case - mostly because everyone expects a decent rival to Facebook with its cryptocurrency project.

“At Amazon, we deal with data a lot, so I’ll be happy to have that conversation two or three years from now,” Gaulthier finalized, delaying the topic about cryptocurrencies once again.

The new crypto market wrap on our altcoin news site shows that the altcoins are now struggling and are apparently getting eaten while Bitcoin is making new leaps forward to the $9,300 level, with 151% in yearly gains up to date. As altcoins suffer, Bitcoin breaks out again with one hour spikes, with the previous one sending it to an intraday high of $9,350. The backup which started the day made the crypto markets vulnerable. As BTC hovers around its highest price for over a year, there is a huge wall of resistance just above this level, so further consolidation is definitely likely for the coming days. The fact that altcoins suffer now is best illustrated by a number of them featured in our latest cryptocurrency news. Ethereum (ETH), for example, has not even gained off Bitcoin's 2% pump. The cryptocurrency still remains stagnant below $270 and there are further losses to its price. Despite the support at $260 which is holding, there is very little momentum for the biggest altcoin this week. Right now, the outlook of the crypto market shows that the top ten has done very little over the past 24 hours with most of the coins moving less than 1% in either direction. The biggest movement, as many best cryptocurrency news sites noted, was the one from Stellar which dropped another 2% and is still weak. While altcoins suffer, BNB is also down by a similar amount of 2%. During the Asian trading today, little is going on. Monero is the only altcoin which is gaining as it makes a 3% surge to the top $100. The losing 3% are Cosmos and NEO, while Tezos is dropping out of the top twenty and is dumping another 4% on the day. The only altcoin which is gaining while altcoins suffer is MaidSafeCoin. With a 13% surge, the relatively new and popular altcoin is gaining due to the anti Facebook rhetoric. https://twitter.com/maidsafe/status/1141332767998906368 As the coming altcoin news show, Egretia is the second best altcoin on the day, grabbing 8% while Insight Chain dropped 12%. Ardor is also falling hard with a 7% loss on the day. The total crypto market capitalization has increased by $2 billion or so today, which is pretty much all Bitcoin as the dominant cryptocurrency drives the markets to $288 billion. Its dominance right now is over 57% while altcoins suffer and remain asleep.

Facebook has recently announced its blockchain/altcoin project named Libra, going viral on many best cryptocurrency news sites for launching a complete blockchain with new programming language in a matter of months. The official document, the Libra testnet, details all of the documentation that is released with the project, giving a lot of insight into its philosophy and design of the new blockchain. Named Libra and not "GlobalCoin" as previously dubbed, Facebook is navigating towards a bright cryptocurrency future. The chain sports a new programming language (just like Ethereum did in the altcoin news before) - called Move. With this, Facebook says that it aims to create a "safe" place for people to develop with digital assets. In the cryptocurrency terms, that is called the Libra testnet. Nonetheless, Facebook is one of the more developer-friendly blockchain projects that you will see - with a vast documentation including gems such as the following:

“Libra is built on a secure, scalable, and reliable blockchain. It is backed by a reserve of assets designed to give it intrinsic value and is governed by the independent Libra Association tasked with evolving the ecosystem.”

With this, developers will be able to write programs in the Move language which can run on the Libra blockchain. As the Libra testnet also notes, anything that you can imagine would be possible - from opening a savings account to opening a merchant account to maybe even some kind of lottery system, the latest cryptocurrency news show. It is evident that Facebook plans to build an economy outside of the regular government view - and a digital currency which could open many doors around the world. From another perspective, it is definitely not absurd for governments to consider the Libra testnet and accept the coin for certain services. As the Libra whitepaper shows:

“For too many, parts of the financial system look like telecommunication networks pre-internet. Twenty years ago, the average price to send a text message in Europe was 16 cents per message.3 Now everyone with a smartphone can communicate across the world for free with a basic data plan. Back then, telecommunications prices were high but uniform; whereas today, access to financial services is limited or restricted for those who need it most — those impacted by cost, reliability, and the ability to seamlessly send money.”

The big question that everyone has is the following... Are we on the verge of a new era of peer-to-peer commerce?