Facebook’s Crypto Project May Launch Next Year: Report

A New York Times report said that companies such as Facebook, Signal and Telegram are working on cryptocurrency projects which they plan to launch over the next year. The companies will allow users to send money to contacts on their messaging systems.

Facebook, under the aegis of WhatsApp, is reportedly developing a coin for WhatsApp users, which they can send to friends and family instantly. The company has already reached out to cryptocurrency exchanges about selling the Facebook coin to consumers.

The cryptocurrency plan of Facebook is being led by former president of PayPal, David Marcus, along with more than 50 engineers.

Facebook is testing use-cases of blockchain across segments, even though its first project is the cryptocurrency coin which will be pegged to the value of traditional currencies. It is reportedly looking to peg the value of its each coin to multiple foreign currencies, beyond US Dollar. It could also 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 reports come nearly a month after it was speculated that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is looking to integrate Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and directly control the issues of the three entities. The company is in the early stages of the integration but plans to complete it by the end of this year or in early 2020.

The cryptocurrency plans of Facebook coincide with its peers like Telegram and Signal.

Telegram, with 300 Mn users across the globe, is also working on a digital coin, Gram. It reportedly told investors that it was 90% done with the key components of the network that would house the Gram. The company has told investors it hopes to have some version of the system out in the next few months.

On the other hand, Signal, the encrypted messaging service, is also working on its own coin, along the lines of apps like Kakao and Line. Last week itself, JP Morgan also announced its crypto plans.

Leading crypto investor Mike Novogratz had earlier forecasted the crypto market to hit $2 Tn by 2018.  While in India, the Supreme Court of India has directed the Unio/n of India to come up with a cryptocurrency regulatory policy in the next four weeks.

[The development was reported by New York Times]