After appointing former Messenger head David Marcus to head the company’s blockchain team, Facebook has been bolstering its blockchain team for a while now. Reports from late 2018 have indicated that Facebook is designing a stablecoin targeted at the massive remittances market in India. The stablecoin would allow Whatsapp users in India to transact with each other through a blockchain-based currency with a stable value.
Now, The New York Times reports that Facebook’s ambitions for its cryptocurrency could be broader. NYT spoke to sources who told the publication that Facebook has already talked to cryptocurrency exchanges about a potential listing for its stablecoin. Apparently, Facebook employees told the exchanges that they would like to launch the coin in the first half of this year.
According to the NYT report, Facebook might peg the stablecoin to a basket of different currencies, and not just the US dollar. More than 50 of Facebook’s engineers are reportedly working on the project. Details about what kind of blockchain platform Facebook is using for the coin are unknown. Most stablecoins on the market today function on Ethereum ETH, -1.54%, although its scalability limitations could be a turn-off for Facebook.
Even though a stablecoin is hardly exciting for cryptocurrency speculators, a company of Facebook’s size launching a blockchain-based product could go a long way towards legitimizing the technology and bring more attention to digital assets in general.