Facebook will build a crypto coin that is crafted to make it easier to transfer money on WhatsApp, according to a Bloomberg report. The coin will be focused on India and will allow Indian workers abroad to send funds back home.
Coin should solve problems in international transfers
Other Bitcoin startups have already started working to solve problems involved with the difficult and expensive processes in international transfers of funds.
The Bloomberg announcement notes: "The company is developing a stablecoin — a type of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar — to minimize volatility, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans. Facebook is far from releasing the coin, because it’s still working on the strategy, including a plan for custody assets, or regular currencies that would be held to protect the value of the stablecoin, the people said."
Tether is the most prominent stablecoin at present, even though some have expressed doubts about whether it is back to one US dollar for each Tether as the company claims.
Back in May, the Cheddar news channel first broke the news that Facebook was developing its own crypto coin noting that Facebook had been considering the move for some time: "Facebook started studying blockchain almost a year ago, when a member of its corporate development team, Morgan Beller, began looking at how the social platform could use the emerging technology. At the time, Beller was the only Facebook employee devoted to studying blockchain, the digital and decentralized ledger that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Her work was thrust into the spotlight this week when Facebook announced that the vice president in charge of the Messenger app, David Marcus, would lead a new team to “explore how to best leverage blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch. Marcus leads a team of less than a dozen Facebook employees working on blockchain. Before joining the company, he was the president of PayPal, which facilitates transactions between users in Facebook’s Messenger app. "
The Facebook coin would have its value based on the US dollar. This should minimize the volatility of the coin compared to more prominent coins such as Bitcoin, the number one cryptocoin by market value which have a high volatility as to their value. There are numerous details still to be worked out. It would appear that Facebook is still far from releasing the coin as yet. Indian foreign workers may have to wait a considerable time before they can actually make use of the planned coin.
Previously published in Digital Journal
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