Facebook launches its own cryptocurrency

Pavel Durov has a serious competitor - Facebook decided to launch his own cryptocurrency and payment system

Photo: Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

The example of Telegram is contagious-now Facebook has decided to develop its cryptocurrency based on its own blockchain platform, which is already working on a special unit of the company led by the former head of the Messenger unit and the best instagram developers.

• The fact that Facebook is going to launch his cryptocurrency was the first to announce the American publication Cheddar. There are no details of the project yet, it is only known that we are talking about a system of payments that “billions of company users around the world” can use. In total, Facebook has, according to the latest reporting, 2.2 billion active users per month.
• A special unit of 12 people is working on the blockchain platform and cryptocurrency. He is headed by the Vice President of Facebook, who had previously been responsible for the Messenger application, David Marcus is a recognized expert on electronic payments and blockchain. Before Facebook, he worked as Paypal President, in the first half of the 2010s he was one of the early investors in Bitcoin, and last December he entered the board of directors of one of the largest Coinbase cryptocurrencies. The Marcus team included top -end Instagram employees, which in the last two years was the fastest growing Facebook product.
• The project will be the first Facebook experiment with digital currencies since 2009, when the company launched Virtual money Facebook Credits, which could be spent in games like a "happy farmer". But the idea did not gain popularity, and two years later the project was closed.
• Waiting for cryptocurrencies from Facebook is not worth it soon - its development may take years and demand acquisitions of specialized companies, writes Cheddar. At the same time, Facebook (at least for now) is not going to conduct ICO, offering users to buy cryptocurrency at a fixed price. Last week, Ton decided to abandon the public ICO public ICO, which raised $ 1.7 MRPD at a closed placement.

What am I to me?

If you have a truly good startup in the field of blockchain, Facebook plans are a great opportunity to try to sell: the company never spares money to buy competencies (and at the same time, strangling potential competitors in the early stage). And if not, it remains only to follow whether Facebook can get ahead of Telegram before and other competitors.

Peter Mironenko