Facebook Coin Plans
Last week the BBC reported that Facebook will be launching its own Cryptocurrency, dubbed the ‘GlobalCoin’.
In the last 10 years since their creation, Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and other Crypto assets like Ethereum, Ripple, Tron, etc have been in the news for both good and bad. Recently they’ve been on the rise, with institutional investors looking to get in after Bitcoin hit $20k a piece in December of 2017 almost than 20X the price of an ounce of gold!
Now Facebook has come out of the closet, with inside sources revealing that plans are underway for the social media giant to enter the Cryptocurrency space, with its own coin set to be launched in 2020 after some trials late this year. It appears the Cryptoasset will be an exchange token in Facebook’s payments-focused system. This means it will allow Facebook Inc’s 2.7 billion users on apps: Whatsapp, Instagram, and Messenger to send money to each other bi-passing the traditional banking system and reducing transaction fees.
Other Tech Companies Entering The Space
Interestingly, Facebook is not the be first nor will it be the only tech company looking to do this. All the big tech companies and even financial institutions have been quietly doing their research and filing patents. Big Names such as AMAZON, NIKE, AT&T, IBM, PAYPAL among myriad others are all getting in on this. This serves to tell the smart entrepreneur/investor that this is no longer a fad or a passing craze, but something to pay close attention to.
Towards the end of last year (2018) Telegram, another big instant messaging app company founded by the Russian Durov brothers raised close to $2bn in an ICO of its own cryptocurrency “Gram”. According to recent reports, the company will also be launching its own blockchain TON, upon which developers will be able to built Dapps (Decentralised Applications) making it a formidable competitor to Ethereum.
According to Futurist Roger James Hamilton, “These tech apps see themselves taking over from banks, printing their own digital money. And the banks are following suit. America’s biggest bank, JP Morgan (who’s CEO Jamie Dimon famously said “I don’t really give a sh*t about bitcoin”) in February [2019] became the first bank to create its own Cryptocurrency, JPM Coin.
JP Morgan has now joined Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, UBS, Barclays, HSBC & Sandtander in creating a shared Cryptocurrency for their interbank USC (Utility Settlement Coin) project.”
My thoughts
In my opinion, given Facebook’s far-reaching influence and market share of the internet’s social media space, a Facebook coin could easily become the first coin to gain mass adoption by the general public including many who up to now would have been skeptical and critical of Bitcoin and other Cryptoassets.
Having Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook messenger under its belt with over 2.1 billion users using at least one of these every day, this coin will be plugging into a very deep and wide network of active users. We are witnessing before our very eyes the evolution of money and the disruption of the global financial system; the rules of money are being re-written.
Soon they’ll be chaos in the financial markets and in this chaos wealth and power will change hands, in Christian circles, this is called a wealth transfer. Some rich fools will go broke and become poor whilst some smart paupers will become rich. For the ignorant the world will keep on turning, the rich getting richer and the poor becoming even poorer.
The only thing constant in life is change; as everything around you is changing are you changing together with it? Those who fail to adapt in these critical times will become extinct like the ancient dinosaurs. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, investor or employee, you’ve got to start thinking about how this new move in technology is going to affect the industry you work in and the markets you’re invested in.
How much do you really know about Blockchain, Distributed Ledger Technology, and the application of these new technologies in Bitcoin and other crypto-assets? Are you even trying to learn? What do you think this news means for Bitcoin and Crypto-assets in general? First, you learn then you earn!
“Chaos is a ladder!” – Little Finger, GOT