Facebook is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency in early 2020, allowing users to make digital payments in a dozen countries.
The currency, dubbed GlobalCoin, would enable Facebook’s 2.4 billion monthly users to change dollars and other international currencies into its digital coins, which could then be used to make payments or transfer money without needing a bank account.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, last month met the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, to discuss the plans, according to the BBC.
Zuckerberg has also discussed the proposal, dubbed Project Libra, with US Treasury officials and is in talks with money transfer firms, including Western Union, to develop cheap, safe ways for people to send and receive money. A report last year said that Facebook is working on a cryptocurrency that will let users transfer money using WhatsApp, its encrypted mobile-messaging app.
In order to try to make the value of Facebook’s digital currency stable, the company is looking to peg its value to a basket of established currencies, including the US dollar, the euro and the Japanese yen.
Facebook has been long expected to make a move in financial services, having hired the former PayPal president David Marcus to run its messaging app in 2014. Marcus, a board member of crypto exchange Coinbase, runs Facebook’s blockchain initiatives, the technology on which cryptocurrencies run.
Earlier this month the US Senate and Banking committee wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg questioning how the currency will work, what consumer protection will be offered and how data will be secured.
In February the JP Morgan became the first major US bank to create its own cryptocurrency, JPM Coin, as a way for its clients to settle payments.
OhNoCrypto
via https://www.aiupnow.com
Mark Sweney, Khareem Sudlow
