Facebook is making its own digital currency and could become the largest bank in the world. Here’s why…
“Facebook is looking at pegging the value of its coin to a basket of different foreign currencies…held in Facebook bank accounts.”
— “Facebook and Telegram Are Hoping to Succeed Where Bitcoin Failed”, By Nathaniel Popper and Mike Isaac, The New York Times, Febraury 28, 2019
According to The New York Times (NYT), Facebook is creating its own cryptocurrency. It would be used on WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, to facilitate transactions between users.
Facebook’s move is clearly to counter the threat from up and coming messenging rivals Telegram and Signal. NYT said that the Facebook secret effort to build its own cryptocurrency “started last year after Telegram raised an eye-popping $1.7 billion to fund its cryptocurrency project”.
Between Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which Facebook owns, there are a collective 2.7 billion users. If Facebook decides to back the value of its own digital coin with a basket of foreign currencies, then it could potentially become the…
