Facebook will reportedly announce cryptocurrency this month, allowing employees to take it as salary

[Recursion]

Oh boy

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/05/facebook-cryptocurrency-coming-in-june-report.html

Facebook will announce its cryptocurrency later this month, and will allow employees working on the project to take their salary in the form of the new currency, according to a report in The Information.

About a year ago, the company appointed former PayPal executive David Marcus to begin exploring opportunities with blockchain, the technological underpinning for cryptocurrency. Since then, several outlets have reported that the company has been building its own digital currency, which users will be able to store, trade, and exchange for regular currency, in part through Facebook apps including Messenger and WhatsApp. The report adds that Facebook is also planning physical ATM-like machines where users can buy the currency.

Building an easy way for Facebook’s more than 2 billion users to pay for things and exchange money between countries could help the company diversify beyond advertising, which today accounts for nearly all of its revenue. Facebook’s ad model has faced criticism from privacy advocates, lawmakers and the press for the ways it collects and uses detailed information about users.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted payments as an important area for the company at its conference for developers earlier this year. However, operating chief Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Wehner have “been skeptical of the initiative internally,” The Information said.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Gee, this is like when some companies paid employees in "company scrip"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

I'm torn which quote I want to use between:

"What could go wrong?".

or

"Oh yeah this will end well."

[KG]

2. cryptocurrency is very volatile

[Recursion]

5. Not necessarily

If they simply say they'll redeem the scrip at a certain rate then it's quite stable. Of course, then you're trusting Facebook.

[DanTex]

6. Is that what they are doing? Wonder how that would work.

In order to actually stabilize the price, they'd have to be willing to both buy and sell at a fixed price. But that would sort of make it not a cryptocurrency, since it would require Facebook, and only Facebook, to have a way to generate more of the currency, which would make it not a distributed.

If all they did was offer to buy it, that would effectively mean Facebook offering an unlimited put option on the currency to the rest of the world. The price could still become hugely volatile if it rose way above the price Facebook was willing to buy at.

Don't know all that much about crypto, though, so I'm speculating.

[Recursion]

10. Right, that's why I was saying it wouldn't be a "currency" per se, but a security

A whole lot depends on the details there. If it's redeemable dollar-for-dollar this could be an interesting technology.

[Cosmocat]

12. yeah

It will be a stable coin, and with Facebook's reach, has a decent chance of broader utilization than the current top stable coins.

[DanTex]

17. Yeah, basically a security, or maybe something like a PayPal account.

Except that instead of paying PayPal transaction fees, you'd pay them to the miners.

Could make sense. Facebook sells a bunch of the coins for cash (or uses them to pay employees), and keeps the cash somewhere earning interest. They don't need to do the work of maintaining accounts and processing transactions because the miners do that.

Technologically, I wonder how the distributed ledger protocol would look like if it also had to give Facebook the ability to print new coins. Maybe Facebook starts with something like an "infinite wallet". But then, if the private key to the infinite wallet gets leaked, that's a problem.

[Cosmocat]

11. It is going to be "stable" coin

like these ...

https://coinpedia.org/top-10/top-ten-stable-coins-in-2019/

[RandiFan1290]

3. Will have to be a 'stablecoin'

Not something to invest in, the price will not fluctuate

[Skidmore]

4. Like being

paid in the funny money you plsyed with when you were a kid. Don't use it now and wouldn't accept bitcoin to fund my life.

[lostnfound]

7. Because Zuck doesn't control enough already? Nt

[PSPS]

8. An easier hidden conduit for Facebook to get those rubles.

[Initech]

9. What could go wrong?

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

13. Oh boy, company scrip!

[Recursion]

19. Some people say a man is made out of mud

[hunter]

14. Cryptocurrencies are so yesterday. I pay my crew with Beanie Babies.

wikipedia

[ancianita]

15. A quick look at their volatility since my daughter bought into it in 2013...

?itok=n7MnJNba

[MineralMan]

16. This might be poor timing on Facebook's part.

Investigations of Facebook, along with Amazon, Google and other internet giants are about to begin. Creating a new currency is just the kind of thing that's not going to play will, I think.

It may well be seen as more evidence of monopoly-style business dealings. Some might even see it as competing with state currencies, both here in the US and elsewhere.

I don't know about the idea. It might be poorly-timed.

[Initech]

18. I sold my soul to the company stoooooooooooooooooore!