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Social media giant Facebook has reportedly held talks with cryptocurrency exchanges about selling “Facebook coin” to consumers.
Anonymous sources told The New York Times that Facebook is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency, which will allow users to send money to the contacts on their messaging systems. Facebook employees have reportedly told the exchanges that they are hoping to roll out the coin in the first half of the year.
The “secretive” project will allow Whatsapp users to send the coin to friends and family instantly.
Facebook ventured into the blockchain universe last May when it launched a blockchain division, which has reportedly grown to a team of 40 members. Last month, Facebook acquired the team behind blockchain startup Chainspace.
Sources familiar with the coin project told the NY Times that Facebook is considering pegging the value of the coin to a basket of different foreign currencies – similar to the concept of stablecoin.
“Facebook could guarantee the value of the coin by backing every coin with a set number of dollars, euros and other national currencies held in Facebook bank accounts,” the report said.
The company is also working on a major overhaul of its messaging infrastructure, which would connect Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The integration is expected to extend the reach of its token to the 2.7 billion people who use one of these three apps each month.
In addition to Facebook, Telegram and Signal are also planning to roll out their own cryptocurrencies – GRAM and Mobilecoin, respectively.
