There has been a considerable amount of attention regarding Facebook’s announcement of a multi-fiat currency backed Digital Currency, called Libra.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto-exchange based in Malta, has today announced its Venus stablecoin project, which is designed to develop stablecoins and Digital Assets linked/pegged to fiat currencies in different countries for local citizens to use. Binance is looking to engage with governments and multinational corporations to help them develop their Digital currencies using Blockchain technology. Binance has already launched  BGBP – which is a stablecoin ‘pegged’ to £ sterling.

Binance founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, said recently “Binance doesn't want to dominate the stablecoin market with Venus, the goal with Venus is to boost crypto adoption, and the exchange's upcoming project can potentially help Facebook’s Libra”.

Facebook has set up a separate organisation in Switzerland and currently has 27 companies on an advisory board for Libra, including PayPal, Visa, Coinbase, Uber and Mastercard. Binance is going to adopt a similar governance structure to Facebook's but has not announced partners for Venus yet, it has said it is “looking to create new alliances and partnerships with governments, corporations, technology companies and other cryptocurrency companies and projects involved in the larger blockchain ecosystem”.

Another firm, active in offering a white-label service to create Digital Currencies backed by fiat, is New Alchemy, which itself helped over 80 organisations raise over $1,3 billion in ICOs. New Alchemy is using its experience and investor base to launch Digital Currencies and asset-backed Security Tokens (STOs).

Digital Currencies could be likened to the oil in an engine, in that they allow Smart Contracts to be used to transfer economic value i.e. payments using Blockchain platforms, thus by-passing traditional banks and many of the intermediaries, all of whom charge fees for their services.

Given the interest from governments and large companies, Binance may well find it is ‘pushing on an open door’.