50 person Facebook team plans cryptocurrency payment tech, report says

The purported coin is geared for ordinary money transfers and not investment speculation, according to The New York Times.

Ready to send some virtual money to your Facebook friends or WhatsApp contacts so you can split the restaurant bill? Maybe someday you’ll be using a cryptocurrency to do so.

Many people in the tech world have soured on cryptocurrencies and their accounting underpinnings, called blockchain. But Facebook remains interested, with a 50 person project underway to build a technology that’ll let members send each other digital money, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Cryptocurrencies initially excited fans who wanted a new digital-era payment mechanism, but as the hype increased, investors hoping to see their value rise dominated the cryptocurrency domain. The resulting bubble has mostly burst, but it appears Facebook is trying to sidestep such frenzies and build something more useful for day-to-day money transfers among its more than 2 billion members, the Times said.

Facebook’s cryptocurrency project would likely involve a cryptocurrency whose price remains stable, the Times said, corroborating an earlier Bloomberg report. That design would be geared toward avoiding a speculative frenzy like the one that caused the value of the seminal cryptocurrency, bitcoin, to soar and then crash. Cryptocurrencies that are desirable for investment can be poorly suited for ordinary payment transactions since the value in ordinary money can fluctuate wildly.

Facebook didn’t comment on the story details, but it did confirm its blockchain work.

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Source: 50 person Facebook team plans cryptocurrency payment tech, report says – CNET