The world’s largest social media platform has finally laid
out its crypto intentions. By early next year Facebook plans to roll out a
digital payments system in a number of countries and wants to start testing its
own ‘GlobalCoin’ by the end of this year.
According to the , Facebook has already
spoken to Bank of England governor Mark Carney and will release more details on
its this summer. Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, met with the central bank
boss to discuss the risks and opportunities for launching its own
. He has also been in touch with the US Treasury regarding
regulatory issues.
Following a ban on crypto advertising last year, the social media giant clearly wants to monopolize on this venture as it has done so successfully in other areas. It aims to provide its users with a digital payments platform and disrupt existing networks by breaking down financial barriers. Having already gobbled up WhatsApp and Instagram, is now targeting and the raft of perfectly capable crypto currencies already in existence.
GlobalCoin is likely to be a stablecoin, pegged to the dollar or local currencies in the countries allowed to use it. It is also likely to run on a private, centralized , owned and controlled by the company, so does not really come in the same category as or other peer to peer decentralized digital currencies.
The concerns are already mounting. The US Senate and Banking committee wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg earlier this month questioning how the crypto will work, what consumer protection will be offered, and how data and finances will be secured.
Can Facebook be Trusted With Finance?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election
Facebook Privacy Scandal Congress, Washington, USA – 10 Apr 2018
Facebook already has the internet by the proverbial digital cojones and has infiltrated every corner of it like a virus. With an active daily user base of 1.5 billion it has an instant market for GlobalCoin.
However, considering the debacle Facebook has been in
recently with security breaches and wide scale data abuse, the big question
should be; can it be trusted with people’s money. Clearly the answer is no, even
the co-founder of the company has as it is now out of control.
With Zuckerberg’s dictatorial grip on what people can
actually view on his platform clearly evident, he is likely to exert the same level
of control over how money flows through it. The world’s biggest social media
company may soon have its own virtual currency, but following accusations of
privacy violations, security breaches, censorship, and fake dissemination,
it remains to be seen how many people will actually use and trust it.
Published at Fri, 24 May 2019 06:01:51 +0000
