If the buzz around the tech world is to be believed, the social media giant Facebook is all set to be the latest to jump on the blockchain wagon as it is said to be developing its own cryptocurrency for money transfers.
According to a report from Bloomberg, the company will be focusing first on the Indian subcontinent, allowing the users to carry out transactions on WhatsApp, a messaging service platform that Facebook Inc acquired earlier in 2014; owing to the service’s immense popularity across the Indian market with a monthly base of over 200 million active users. Remarkably, India is also currently leading as the largest market for remittances this year with immigrants sending a stipulating $69.59 billion back home in 2017 as projected in the latest annual report from the World Bank.
Although the report suggested that while the actual launch of their coveted stablecoin is far away, the planning started earlier this year, in May with the corporation setting up their core team to carry out initial research in the domain. They posted five job openings recently and are eagerly looking to expand the team by accepting people with expertise in Data Science, Software Engineering and Marketing.
This team is said to be headed by David Marcus, who formerly worked as a VP for Facebook’s Messenger Service. In June, this year, the firm appointed Evan Cheung, who is a senior engineer, as the engineering director for the blockchain operation.
Anthony Pompliano, the founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets and a cryptoanalyst himself tweeted that, “If Facebook launches the stablecoin they are reportedly building, it will quickly become the most used product in cypto.” He also said that because the Indian government has been at cross ends with cryptocurrency services since some time, things were bound to get interesting if Facebook were to enter the domain.
Meanwhile, global messaging platforms such as Kakao, Telegram also revealed their plans to jump into the bandwagon, with Japan’s LINE becoming one of the first companies enabling public trading by launching ‘LINK Tokens’, their cryptocurrency in August this year.
It will be interesting to watch how and when Facebook will be entering the market and what surprises it is going to bring.
