According to the New York Times Facebook, Instagram, Signal are in plans of rolling out a new cryptocurrency that is likely to come by next year. This will allow users to send money to contacts on messaging platforms like Venmo or PayPal that can be moved across international borders. The social media giant Facebook is also working in its own coin silently where WhatsApp users could send it to friends and families instantly.
Facebook has been having conversations with cryptocurrency exchanges on selling the Facebook coin to consumers. Telegram on the other hand that has an estimate of 300 million users worldwide is working on digital coins and Signal, too that is an encrypted messaging service has its own coin in works. If things fall in place, then Facebook and Telegram could make digital wallets for cryptocurrencies available that will be used by millions. There are many companies that are working on digital coins.
Just like Bitcoin, the new cryptocurrencies will make it easier to move money between countries, but the new designs that are being used are the energy-guzzling mining process that Bitcoin relies on.
Last year, David Marcus, a long-time in-charge of Facebook Messenger, said in a blog post that he is setting up a small group to explore how to best leverage Blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch.
Facebook also promoted one of its senior engineers Evan Cheng as the Director of Engineering at its Blockchain division, signalling the importance of the project.
According to Zuckerberg, the users will soon be able to login into Facebook via Blockchain-based authentication.
In a public interview with Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain late last month, Zuckerberg said he is "potentially interested" in putting the Facebook login on the Blockchain technology.
"I'm thinking about going back to decentralised or Blockchain authentication. Although I haven't figured out a way to make this workout but this is around authentication and basically granting access to your information and to different services," Zuckerberg told Zittrain.
According to him, Blockchain will allow users more power on conferring data access to third-party apps.
"Like many other companies, Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of Blockchain technology," Facebook said in an earlier statement.
(With IANS inputs)
