Since December 2018, the rumors were circulating in the market that Facebook is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency. The news is not new though. Almost a decade ago Facebook tried to enter the blockchain market but neither Facebook nor virtual currency market was mature enough to take the stake. Anyhow, the firm now has a 2-billion user base of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. According to Financial Time’s special report, since last year, it’s secretly working on the project.
The project, known as “GlobalCoin” is planned to be launched in a dozen countries at the beginning of 2020. A test run is expected to start by the end of 2019.
This project will enable the users to do transaction within and outside the platform. In April, Facebook registered a company in Switzerland named Libra, to setup software for payments procedure, developing blockchain infrastructure, and data analysis process. The same month, in the developer’s conference of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg stated that “payments are [sic] one of the areas where we have an opportunity to make it a lot easier.”
According to some other reports, Facebook has also talked to regulators, financial institutions, online merchants, trading firms and cryptocurrency exchanges that can convert digital money into other virtual or fiat currencies, including the dollar.
Reported by BBC, Zuckerberg had spoken to Western Union, Chicago-based high-frequency trading companies Jump and DRW, Bank of England governor Mark Carney and US Treasury officials to finalize the process.
Zuckerberg’s former adversaries Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss claimed that the idea was their brainchild, copied by Facebook. Facebook and all the aforementioned companies have declined to comment.
