World’s largest social media group, Facebook Inc. is said to be planning to launch its own digital currency, GlobalCoin to rival Bitcoin, the largest digital currency.
According to Facebook, Globalcoin will be launched in 2020 (next year).
According to Verge, GlobalCoin will reportedly be available in around a dozen countries at launch, where it’s expected to offer people affordable and secure payments without the need for a bank account.
It seems Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg is really determined to push ahead with the idea. However, the currency will need to overcome numerous technical and regulatory hurdles before it can be launched. According to BBC News, last month Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with the Bank of England’s governor Mark Carney to discuss the opportunities and risks of the planned digital currency.
One of the most certain information available is that GlobalCoin will be resgistered and operated from Switzerland, a financial environment known for its friendly disposition towards cryptocurrency innovation.
It has been rumoured that GlobalCoin will be developed as a stablecoin, which means its value will be pegged with the US Dollar. This is very similar to many stablecoins which have been developed or forked from Bitcoin.
Currently, Tether and DAI are some of the most used stablecoins.
This planned move will be Facebook’s second attempt at having its virtual currency. Some few years ago, Facebook announced Facebook Credits, a digital wallet that allows its users to pay for items on the social network in select countries. The company has not scaled it since then and it has gone silent on it.
The entrance of Facebook into the digital currency community is very curious on hand and welcoming on another hand.
Because Facebook is a public company operating as a legally-registered corporate entity means GlobalCoin will not be a decentralised digital currency and as such might be welcomed with some resentment because of the community’s preference for a full-decentralized network.
This does not mean there are no centralized digital currencies that are doing well or widely-adopted in the community. Ripple Networks and its XRP token is very much popular and currency the third-largest digital currency by market capitalization. It is a centralized crypto. However, Facebook is not Ripple because Ripple was developed for the sole purpose of facilitation international payments. The idea that a social media network with all the information on members will be issuing digital tokens makes it a harder pill to swallow.
Earlier today, we reported that Amazon Inc. filed for a patent for a wristband device that read the emotions of its users to give them health and fitness tips. The innovation was greeted with mixed feelings because of the faultlines of data privacy and security.
Last year, Facebook was enmeshed in a major scandal after Cambridge Analytica, a data mining company used wrongly-collected Facebook users’ data to target them with political campaigns without their knowledge. Facebook’s plan to launch its own digital currency will be received within the background of his past.
There are still many question marks on the future of GlobaCoin. The idea that the digital currency will be used on Facebook does not make it desireable for many people in the digital currency community. Facebook will need to get exchanges to support the currency. While there reports that Facebook is in talks with Western Union, there are no guarantees that the latter would jump on Facebook’s token in substitution for its fiat currency transfer business.
