Social media behemoth, Facebook, is looking to attract venture capital (VC) investment into its proposed cryptocurrency project, reports New York Times (NYT) contributor Nathaniel Popper. The company is reportedly looking to raise as much as $1 billion for its digital token project.
Making Facebook Coin Less Centralized
Popper announced the news via his handle on April 8, 2019, claiming inside sources at the company say Facebook wants to get VC firms to invest in the project. According to these anonymous sources, the social media giant is targeting as much as $1 billion in investments to launch its digital token project.
For Popper, opening up the fundraising project to outside investors might be Facebook’s way of creating an aura of decentralization for the project. When the news of a proposed “” emerged late last year, several critics declared that given the company’s antecedents, the token project wouldn’t have any semblance of decentralization.
An excerpt from Popper’s Twitter thread on the matter reads:
“One person I spoke with said that Facebook is talking about using the money as collateral for its cryptocurrency. Facebook has been designing the coin to keep a stable value, pegged to a basket of foreign currencies held in bank accounts.”
Per previous reports, Facebook’s plan to launch a digital token is something of an open secret. However, beyond the surface, not much is known definitively about the target market of the “Facebook Coin.”
One popular theory is that the company’s digital token will be a stablecoin targeted at the Indian remittance market. This plan involves money transfers within the company’s apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Analysts at Barclays say the project could generate as much as for the company by 2021.
Anti-Crypto to Developing its Virtual Currency
If “Facebook Coin” becomes a reality, it would mean a complete 180 from a company that initially took steps to censor cryptocurrency content on its platform.
However, some might suggest that such actions were taken to prevent its platform from contributing to the success of given that it had cryptocurrency-related plans of its own.
Already, the company has acquired a few blockchain startups like . Reports indicate that the digital token could be launched by and that Facebook is already in talks with a few exchange platforms to list the proposed cryptocurrency token.
Published at Tue, 09 Apr 2019 18:00:18 +0000