Facebook is preparing to release digital coins tied to a basket of currencies and secured by the company's capital

When Telegram releases its cryptocurrency, it will not be the only instant messenger with the possibility of financial calculations, writes the NY Times . Facebook has similar plans (for WhatsApp messenger) and Signal, and not only for them.



Information on the development of such a project was confirmed by five people. Unfortunately, all of them are bound by confidentiality agreements, so they cannot give their names and we have to say “information from anonymous sources”.



So, according to informed sources, more than 50 engineers are working on the project. The Block, an independent website that tracks job search ads, reports 13 Facebook open positions for the blockchain project .



According to them, Facebook is working on a payment system for the WhatsApp messenger. Users will be able to make payments and send coins to each other. The project is already far enough advanced, so that Facebook recently held talks with cryptocurrency exchanges to sell new coins, four people said informed about the negotiations. Facebook employees told the exchanges that they were hoping to get the product in the first half of 2019.

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The project manager is PayPal’s ex-president David Marcus. Facebook reportedly began working in this direction last year after Telegram collected an incredible $ 1.7 billion to finance its cryptocurrency.



Facebook takes certain steps to keep the project a secret. According to two employees, the team works in an office with separate access via a key card, so other employees cannot enter there.



Facebook is considering several ways to use the blockchain. Five people who know about the project, said that the direct product, most likely, will be a coin tied to a fiat (the so-called stablecoin). Such a digital token will not be attractive for speculators - the main audience of cryptocurrency so far - but this will keep the rate and pay in stores, without worrying that the value of the coin rises and falls.



Facebook will guarantee the value of the coins, supporting them with a certain amount of dollars, euros and other national currencies in their bank accounts.



Stablecoin, tied to the value of the dollar, has already been released by several companies, including recently experimented with them by JPMorgan Chase.



In addition to Facebook, other messengers are working on the release of cryptocurrency. Development of cryptocurrency Telegram is not a secret. The company has about 300 million users worldwide, so the TON platform has a good chance of gaining popularity in at least some countries.



Encrypted messenger Signal, popular among IT-specialists and privacy advocates, is preparing the release of Mobilecoin cryptocurrency.



And this is not a complete list: besides them, the most popular messengers in South Korea and Japan are preparing to release their cryptocurrencies: Kakao and Line .



These projects are not created from scratch. Practice shows that mobile payments via instant messengers are really convenient for users. For example, in the US, Venmo has gained popularity, and in China, many use a payment system that runs inside the WeChat messaging system.



"This is pretty much the most exciting thing happening in cryptography right now," said Eric Melzer, co-founder of cryptocurrency-oriented venture capital firm Primitive Ventures. “Each company has its merits, and it will be incredibly interesting to watch this battle.”



Like Bitcoin, new digital coins make it easier for people to move money between countries, especially in developing countries, where it’s difficult for ordinary people to open bank accounts and buy things online, the NY Times writes. Current projects that are currently being discussed, as a rule, do not need mining, which is based on Bitcoin.



However, new cryptocurrencies may face the same regulatory and technological difficulties as Bitcoin. The absence of a central government — a government or a bank — has made Bitcoin useful for criminals and fraudsters, and restrictions on mining make it difficult to conduct a large number of transactions.



“All of them [new coins] will face the same types of technological limitations,” said Richard Ma, chief executive officer of Quantstamp, which provides a security audit for cryptocurrency.