Facebook Launching Its Own CryptocurrencyThe company is "recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants to help launch a cryptocurrency-based payments system on the back of its gigantic social network." And the Journal suggests that the project "threatens to upend the traditional, lucrative plumbing of e-commerce and would likely be the most mainstream application yet of cryptocurrency." [...]
Facebook has reportedly already talked to Visa, Mastercard, and payment processing company First Data Corp., and it is allegedly seeking a $1 billion investment in the project. Facebook has also been talking to e-commerce platforms and other companies about accepting its cryptocurrency, once it exists.
As the Journal surmises, Facebook is likely looking to do with payments what it's already done with sign-ins -- creating a module that can be placed on sites all over the web. "Facebook aims to burrow more deeply into the lives of its users," the Journal writes.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Zuck bucks!
nailed it
How do I buy <a hre... Let me get back to you on this one.
Facebook transformed into a buzzword factory so gradually I didn't even notice.
Mark and the Zuckerbunch literally do spend all day thinking up ways to make the world worse.
Ƶ100 says they were taking careful notes while watching mr_robot's e-coin story line...
Facebook is just catching up to social media companies in Asia that have been doing online payments for years, especially in countries where credit cards don't exist (or financial privacy, for that matter).
It won't be a cryptocurrency in the ecologically wasteful bitcoin sense. If Facebook owns all the servers, and doesn't let anyone else compete for consensus, then there's no need for expensive work-proofs or Earth-burning mining operations (only the usual protections against fraud and theft are required). If Facebook promises to buy a dollar for every coin, then there's no speculative investments market (well, there is, but it's basically the same market that trades in Facebook stock and fraud insurance). It's not really a cryptocurrency--it's just a payment processor with complicated ledger database software. The story would be the same if Facebook had announced they were going to buy Paypal and integrate their product lines.
Lots of people are setting up "crypto currencies" that are really just "bank accounts" (not real bank accounts) with RSA public key hashes as account numbers. You can raise billions of dollars from investors who don't understand the difference, so you print some stickers with words like "crypto" and "blockchain" on them, and apply them to whatever random applications you were already planning to deploy next quarter.
You can only really make this work if you have some connection to the non-crypto financial system, like say you're a multi-billion-dollar tech company that can call the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard in for a pitch meeting. Other people without these connections have tried stablecoins already, but their failures have been spectacular. Nobody believes they won't just steal all the money, making the stablecoins worthless, so to prevent this, financial regulators have seized all the money, making the stablecoins worthless.