Facebook Telegram Cryptocurrency war heating up! Facebook is working hard to close the lead that Telegram has. It is rumored that Facebook will roll out its own cryptocurrency later this year.
There is little chance that Facebook will be adopting or partnering with an existing cryptocurrency project. Facebook has already expanded its ability to create its own cryptocurrency when they acquired Chainspace, a London based cryptocurrency team earlier this month.
According to the New York Times, Facebook is already working on a crypto coin for users of WhatsApp to send and receive payments to each other. The report added that the project is so far along that Facebook has already approached cryptocurrency exchanges with potentially listing their new coin. WhatsApp is Facebook’s guinea pig for a larger scale rollout for a cryptocurrency project.
Facebook faces quite a few hurdles, however. Facebook has shown itself incapable of being trusted with information. The big question is – if we can’t trust Facebook with our information, can we trust Facebook with our money? Facebook has had multiple obstructions in the past couple of years – privacy issues, fake news, censorship, security breaches, profiting from personal data, data manipulation, etc etc. Facebook, as a whole, is the antithesis to what cryptocurrency stands for – however, Facebook does not seem like they will accept this premise without fighting to profit off of blockchain technology.
Facebook is not the only company with cryptocurrency aspirations – Telegram plans on launching the Telegram Open Network (TON) by this October. Signal, another messaging company, is reportedly working on its own crypto coin as well. Big messaging applications in South Korea and Japan, Kakao and Line respectively.
Facebook has the upper hand through its bigger user base than Signal or Telegram, however. Facebook could, feasibly, introduce nearly 1.5 billion active daily users to cryptocurrency. Primitive Ventures, a crypto-focused venture capital firm, has a co-CEO, Eric Meltzer, who said:
“It’s pretty much the most fascinating thing happening in crypto right now. They each have their own advantage in this battle, and it will be insane to watch it go down.”
Facebook has been implementing strict secrecy procedures surrounding its new crypto coin. Over 50 engineers are working on this project, with access cards that separate the lab from workers that are excluded from accessing the area.
It’s likely that Facebook will use a permissioned private blockchain to control its cryptocurrency. This will essentially make it completely centralized and owned by the company. The new crypto will likely be a stablecoin as well – likely pegged to the dollar.
What do you think? Will you be purchasing Facebook’s coin? Or do you think this flies in the face of what decentralization and cryptocurrency is all about to begin with? Let us know what you think on our Facebook page!
