So Facebook just announced their stable coin, Global Coin(seriously?). I've been thinking about what this will turn into. What it will mean for the future of social media, Facebook, the internet and of course crypto.
So the initial use case stated is users being able to send each other money. Yea right, that might be the first use case, but I know they have bigger plans than that. So if I put my Zuck hat on, I know that Facebook has an account for practically everyone in the world and a universal sign in thingy that anyone developing a web app can use for automatically signing people up. I'm thinking an obvious expansion of this idea will be "Checkout with Facebook". This way online retailers won't have to get you to sign up for their site to sell you stuff. You can just do everything through Facebook. That's one thing I'd bet their aiming for for sure.
Next is creating their own marketplace. Right now facebook has its own marketplace where people can sell each other stuff, but they could expand this in a major way with their own cryptocurrency as the main currency being used. This will again be really convenient for people because they'll be able to have one place where they can shop all over the world and send money to anyone potentially. Depending on how borderless they go, I assume they'll be following some strict regulations. Payments would be instant, and since there will surely be a level of centralization, they'll probably be able to provide basic protections and some form of insurance.
To add to that, Facebook monetizes your data. They have value because they know what you like and what you're into, so they can give that information to advertisers to only show you relevant ads. How much more money will they be able to make once they can also directly track each customers purchase with each company, how much they spent, how often they spend it etc.
If you're not already seeing how this could go horribly wrong let's think about this a bit more.
Facebook is continuously getting into trouble now because of what they're doing with your data. What they're collecting, how long they're keeping it, what they're selling, what they're getting consent for, etc. By ultimately also acting as a global market in and of itself Facebook could grow to a truly scary behemoth. It could start competing with Paypal, Amazon, Google Pay to name a few, and ingrain themselves into people's lives to a problematic extent. Especially when you consider that they totally ban people arbitrarily.
When you're using Facebook to sign into everything, and to pay for everything, what happens when they deplatform you? Did you just get excommunicated from the internet?
Unfortunately the masses flock to whatever is the most convenient. With everyone here racking their brains on what stops people from using Steem, as I've said before, the UX is the number one culprit. That's where Facebook will have a huge advantage over everything else. They have the resources and connections to make everything incredibly easy and integrated into people's lives. Guaranteed the majority will give up their privacy and data for convenience. That's what we're up against.
That is of course the worst case scenario. If it's sold on open markets that could be interesting as we could buy it with crypto and then buy things with it potentially bypassing fiat all together, but that sounds too good to be true for Facebook. They'll be working with the tax man to milk you until you bleed.
Anyway, what do you all think about this new development. Doom and gloom or excited to see big players getting into crypto?
btw here's a making of shot for my image above :)
