Facebook Cryptocurrency Is Closer Than Ever

In case you haven’t heard, Facebook, Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp are indeed working on their own Cryptocurrency. The idea is to allow their users to make payments to each other using the new coins. Of the above messaging giants, Facebook is the furthest in the development path.

According to the New York Times, five anonymous sources have confirmed that Facebook is working on a coin that WhatsApp users can use to send to friends and families instantly. As per the New York Times report, the five sources were speaking on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.

Four of the five that spoke anonymously, said Facebook’s project is far enough that they are already speaking with crypto exchange platforms on listing the coin for sale to consumers. Three also confirmed that over 50 engineers were currently working on the project.

Going After A Trending Market

Telegram, another social media giant with an estimated reach of over 300 million users is also working on its own Cryptocurrency. Reports also have it that Signal, another encrypted messaging service, popular with technologists and privacy advocates also has its own team working on a coin.

The companies have a reach, so big, it dwarfs backers of early cryptos. Facebook and Telegram alone can make their own digital wallets available to hundreds of millions of users instantly.

The new projects target a market that is growing in popularity each day. For instance, people are rapidly becoming fond of Venmo, a new payment service in the United States. In China, on the other hand, more people are now using a payment service inside the WeChat messaging system.

According to Eric Meltzer, a CoFounder of Primitive Ventures, crypto focused Venture Capital, the venture of the messaging giants in the crypto industry will be one of the most exciting and fascinating in the near future of the crypto industry. And although the messaging companies have an advantage, it will be interesting to watch them battle.

An Unfair Advantage?

With such a huge number of social media users, the new crypto coin by the messaging giants would make it incredibly easy to move money between countries. The regions more likely to benefit from the venture are the developing world where it’s hard for ordinary people to open bank accounts and buy things online.

The three anonymous sources also briefed that Facebook was planning to peg its coin’s value on a basket of foreign currencies rather than peg it on the dollar.

The fact that Facebook is working on an infrastructure to connect its three messaging apps, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, once the integration is done, it would give Facebook’s new crypto an unprecedented reach 0f over  2.7 billion users using one of the three apps.

Regulatory And Technological Hurdles On The Way

The same companies will however not be spared by the technological and regulatory hurdles that other Cryptocurrencies are currently facing. The fact that there is no central authority over cryptos has made cryptos a hub for criminals and scammers. As Richard ma, chief executive at Quantstamp firm says “they will definitely run up against the same limits”