Facebook has always been vocal about its plans to enter the world of cryptocurrency. In fact, even before, it has made clear its intention to be one of the biggest digital asset players. Interestingly, in a report from Bloomberg, the social media giant is already building its own crypto for all WhatsApp money transfers.
The goal of the tech giant is to build a digital asset that would allow an easier process of transferring money on the aforementioned platform. The currency, according to official reports, is expected to be solely designed for India and, at the same time, would allow all Indian workers abroad to send money back home.
Apparently, this is not something new, though the overall process may differ in one way or another. Basically, this is a process that a good number of other Bitcoin startups have already been developing and improving. But given the resources Facebook has, it might just be able to top all of them. The initiative is meant to solve the difficult and expensive process for international transfers.
Facebook has been looking for ways to come up with its own cryptocurrency. As a matter of fact, this decision to do so can be dated back to as far as May. This was basically the month when Cheddar first broke the news. During that time, the social media giant’s messaging platform Messenger and its leader David Marcus was reassigned in order to spearhead a new blockchain division. The latter, in particular, is focused on exploring “how to best leverage Blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch.”
Interestingly, this report is the first to actually give concrete details on the goals that the tech company has been trying to obtain. More importantly, it has finally showed just how it could possibly work in the near future.
Facebook is believed to be looking to develop what is known as a “stablecoin,” which will have a value based on US currency. By doing so, it will be able to minimize the volatility that is seen by more high-tech alternatives like the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The social media firm is apparently far from actually releasing the coin. In other words, people should not necessarily expect to see a real-world implementation anytime soon.
Interestingly, Facebook is trying to double its efforts, especially since it has been on a hiring spree. As of this writing, it already has more than 40 people in its blockchain group, which is something that could be proved via employee titles on LinkedIn.
“Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology,” a company spokesman said in a statement. “This new small team is exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share.”
WhatsApp is known to be a popular mobile-messaging app, even before Facebook acquired it. It turns out, though, that its popularity is even more celebrated in India, a country that is said to offer more than 200 million users. The country also leads the world in remittances — people sent $69 billion home to India in 2017, the World Bank said this year.
It cannot be denied that the past year has seen a boom in crypto projects, especially the ones that are highly related to stablecoins. At one point, there were more than 120 ventures related to this theme. The concept was created to create a digital coin that would be far easier to use on daily purchases because it would be more stable than currencies like Bitcoin.
With this move, it is interesting to see just how much of an impact Facebook could bring to the crypto world. In the next months to come, people could finally see how exactly it is going to be.
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