Facebook is creating its own cryptocurrency

Image: AFP/Oli Scarff

As the value of cryptocurrency continues to decrease from its all-time high in December of last year — a decrease of about $14,000 per coin over the past year according to CryptoCurrencyChart.com — Facebook continues to hang onto the blockchain dream. Bloomberg’s sources claim that the corporation is developing its own digital currency called stablecoins, pegged to the United States dollar.

Four years ago, the company hired former president of PayPal David Marcus, and in May of this year, he was appointed to head Facebook’s blockchain initiatives. In fact, according to LinkedIn’s employee titles, the company’s blockchain division consists of about 40 people who are allegedly working on developing this tech to be used for WhatsApp money transfers. But as of now, the currency is far from being launched, sources said.

When Facebook does announce this technology, it will likely be targeted at the Indian market, as WhatsApp has over 200 million users in the country, and people send tens of billions of dollars to India every year.

While the cryptocurrency market has been jumping and dropping sporadically throughout 2018, the general trend is a deep downward slope. If Facebook goes on to a launch, it will be the first large tech company to enter into this type of project.

Despite all the security and privacy scandals that surround the company, Facebook’s user numbers continue to grow steadily. Nearly 2.3 billion people are active every month on the social media website, according to Statista, so if anyone can bring huge numbers of people to blockchain, it would probably be Facebook. JB

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