Facebook develops cryptocurrency for WhatsApp

• Presumably the solution will be focused on the remittance market in India
  
• The social network is still working on its blockchain strategy.
  

Facebook is working on creating cryptocurrencies for money transfers within the network of WhatsApp messenger. According to sources close to the company, the project is primarily aimed at the Indian market.

The company develops steyblkoin - a type of digital currency, the value of which is tied to the US dollar, which will minimize the volatility. However, Facebook is still far from launching its koin. According to sources who wish to remain anonymous while the company is working on a strategy, in particular, on a plan for trusting assets and choosing currencies that will ensure the value of the new coin.
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Observers have long been waiting for Facebook to make a move in the field of financial services. In 2014, the company hired former PayPal president David Marcus to manage the Messenger application. In May of this year, Markus received the position of head of blockchain initiatives, but this rearrangement in public was not discussed in detail. Facebook has hired a lot of new personnel in a short time, and, judging by the data from LinkedIn, the blockchain division of the company now has about 40 people.

“Like other companies, Facebook is exploring the possibilities of effectively using the strengths of blockchain technology,” said a company spokesman. - Our new team is studying various scenarios of practical implementation. For now, we can only share this information. ”

WhatsApp, the company's mobile messenger, is popular in India, where its client base has 200 million people. India also leads the ranking of countries actively using remittances. According to the World Bank, in 2017, 69 billion dollars were sent to the country.

Last year, the steylcoin segment experienced a boom. According to the website Stable.Report, which tracks the “stable cryptocurrency” sphere, at some point the number of venture projects related to this type of digital assets reached 120. The essence of the steakcoins concept is to create digital cryptocurrencies that are more suitable for everyday use than volatile cryptoactives like bitcoin. This is achieved by stabilizing the value of the asset.

In practice, it turned out to be quite difficult to implement this idea. Over the past few weeks, at least one major project has closed - a steyblcoin called Basis ceased its operation at 8 months of existence. According to representatives of The Hoboken, a company from New Jersey, a startup did not find an obvious way to avoid classifying an asset as a security, not a currency. And, probably, this led to a significant decrease in the number of potential buyers. Such an early completion of the activity occurred despite the fact that the startup managed to enlist the support of the well-known venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Kevin Schwartz, a former member of the governing board of the US Federal Reserve.

The largest steblecoin project Tether to date has not escaped any problems either. Although its creators claim that each token is provided with one US dollar, the company's refusal to conduct an audit made people seriously doubt the truth of these statements.

Perhaps the company Facebook, which has a 2.5 billion user base, more than $ 40 billion in annual profits and a lot of experience working with regulators, is actually more likely to create a reliable and sought-after steylcoin. If everything works out, Facebook will be the first technology company to launch such a project.

The company's reputation in India is going through hard times due to incidents of violence triggered by the spread of false news through WhatsApp. However, Facebook sees tremendous growth opportunities in the country: India is second only to China in the number of Internet users (480 million). According to Forrester Research analysts, by 2022 this figure will increase to 737 million people.