Hm. I think you are all missing the point and trying to make this about cryptocurrency.
Remember the articles a while ago about Zuckerberg begging banks to let him see people’s credit card transactions?
With his own blockchain, he doesn’t need the banks. He can read it right from the blockchain, because that’s what blockchains and Zuckerbergs do.
It’s an advertisers wet dream – finally being able to prove that the people they showed an advert to actually spent money on that site after the advert was shown. He would own the web with that.
EDIT: Replaced two Fs with Zs, because it was only funny for a shortwhile
Yep, facebook wants to be a bank. Not a normal bank, but a disruptive, move fast and break things bank. It’s very similar to paypal; for the first years of their existence there were essentially no laws governing what they were doing. They hold money for people but there are no paper (or electronic) dollars, nor FDIC insurance. They get all the advantages of being a bank with none of the burdens.
And of course being able to see everyone’s bank statements (because fb is the bank) is an advertiser’s dream. fb doesn’t need blockchain for this, and in fact the blockchain would broadcast the proprietary data to competitors.
What I think is also being overlooked here is that this would basically allow Facebook to “print” money.
They don’t need to spend any money mining these coins, they can just create them with the demand. There is no cost to them for creating more of it, no reason to make the algorithm they use for “mining” take any effort at all. If users want more face-coins they will have to buy it for real dollars. Facebook will get those dollars in exchange for performing basically no labor.
If Facebook has 2 billion users and 10% of those buy 1 dollar worth of Face-coin that is already a hefty sum of money.
If you think this can’t be that successful you are probably not looking hard enough, there are a lot of countries where reliable ways of transferring money digitally (either in person or at a distance via the internet) is still really hard. Facebook could easily become a big player here. Even in the western countries most of us are reading this from, there is plenty of opportunity for a method of making digital (micro)transactions .
Incorporating the ability to send Bitcoin to each other would have been a winner. Instead they are going the AOL closed garden route. Well good look to them.
What we need is a decentralised version of Facebook, not Facebook’s version of Bitcoin.
Facebook’s plan is probably either to dodge some kind of financial/privacy regulation, or to untie the coin’s value from the dollar at some future point and make a profit.
If you would trust Facebook with your savings, you must be on some pretty good drugs. Maybe you are looking forward to the day when, instead of “accidentally” letting your private posts become public, they do the same with your money.
Dude! She’s not happy you figured it all out. I’d watch my back if I were you!!
/ You don’t want the Dark Army on your @ss.
// Also, loved, loved, loved D B Wong in that role!
