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Bitcoin Facebook Social Networks The Almighty Buck

Facebook Set To Reveal Own Cryptocurrency Later This Month, Report Says (coindesk.com) 97

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Social media giant Facebook is said to reveal its own cryptocurrency later this month. From a report: According to a report from The Information this week, Facebook is poised to unveil its cryptocurrency to the public later in June, which is aimed to allow users to process transactions via the social media channel, and will be offered to Facebook employees who want to be paid in the form of the cryptocurrency. The report added Facebook is also planning to have physical portals for users to purchase the cryptocurrency, which, according to previous reports, is called GlobalCoin. In addition, Facebook is reportedly inviting external parties to participate in the network that will empower the cryptocurrency to act as "nodes" for a fee that could be as much as $10 million each. The news comes amid recent reports that Facebook has begun conversations with global payments providers, crypto industry players, as well as global regulators regarding the opportunity and regulatory issues for its crypto project.
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Facebook Set To Reveal Own Cryptocurrency Later This Month, Report Says More

Facebook Set To Reveal Own Cryptocurrency Later This Month, Report Says

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  • Hurr Durr tulips (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm a neckbeard and I don't understand crypto!

  • Didn't they get the memo? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday June 06, 2019 @10:07AM (#58718750)

    The idea behind a cryptocurrency was that there is no entity controlling it. Why would anyone want to let a company that pretty much wants total control over your privacy take control of their wallet, too?

    This is about as far from the idea behind cryptocurrency as it is humanely possible.

    • In a few years, if it remains relevant at all, it's going to be widely understood to mean effectively the same thing as plain vanilla digital currency. The entire notion of "no central authority" will be upstaged by more practical concerns such as stability, accountability, transparency and, oh, the ability to settle more than a dozen or two transactions per second worldwide.

      This will be a gross misapprehension of the term, but that's how it goes with buzzwords that are force-fed by media hype to the point

    • FaceBook is going for Homer Simpsons who could fall for the Wallet Inspector con. You won't go broke catering to idiots, because the world has a lot of them.

    • Who cares about ideas. The main uses for cryptocurrency are profiting from investor mania and avoiding regulations.

      Facebook is presumably using it for avoiding regulations. They'll probably use a full reserve dollar tied coin, like Gemini.

    • They got the memo but there was another memo that there is a lot of free cash floating around that can be pulled into to a well branded and known company. This I would guess is a pretty cynical grab for cash which can be done with little effort by facebook. Probably have developed their own dedicated ICs for mining and have a million of them ready to mine from block 1. Will have a mining app that you can download and think you are gaining coins but really just chewing power of course all this mining hardwar

  • You could insure any money I invest at 10x value and I STILL wouldn't use them for Crypto.
    FB has enough over-reach into people's lives as-is.
    I don't think giving them control over what is essentially people's money is a Good Thing.
    Remember, these are the asshats who can dump you off their platform for any reason, including "Because we feel like it."
    Would you accept that sort of behavior from your bank/credit union?
    And if they do so, what happens to your money?
    The big downfall of crypto is liquidity. How do

    • "Would you accept that sort of behavior from your bank/credit union?"

      Uh... yes, because we already do. You banks can close your account for any reason it wants.
      https://money.cnn.com/2014/05/... [cnn.com]

      Many banks have been closing accounts on people for all sorts of controversial issues. They have just been getting by with it longer.

      https://www.btrtoday.com/read/... [btrtoday.com]

      So uhmm.... yea! We totally accept this risk from our banks.

      • Your bank must give you the value of your account. Facebucks? not likely.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        As noted, a bank who wishes to sever their relationship needs to pay you out the exact value in your account.

        Good luck coming to a similar arrangement with FucktBook.

        Especially if they simply delete your account.

    • Real currencies have the same problem though. Think Venezuelan Bolivars--how readily can you get $'s for those? "Hold on to your Confederate currency, boys, the South will rise again!" I'd like to pay for my groceries in Roman currency, please. Even gold has some liquidity problems.

  • I can't wait to be hacked, have it all stolen, etc.

    ZuckerBucks! The safest cryptocurrency since Bitconnect!

  • Sci-Fi books covered this concept - multinational corporations gaining sovereignty and creating dystopian future. Seems like these stories were more right than wrong.

    This is beyond dangerous, if a large corporation like FB or Amazon can create and popularize its own currency then they can effectively avoid paying taxes.

    • Re:Standing army next (Score:4)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Thursday June 06, 2019 @10:43AM (#58718922)

      false statement there, income is still taxable and discoverable too. Have faith in the IRS, they'll get their legal cut.

    • This is beyond dangerous, if a large corporation like FB or Amazon can create and popularize its own currency then they can effectively avoid paying taxes.

      No, no they cannot. The government simply assigns it a cash value, then taxes them as if they had collected cash. You're obligated to pay taxes even on barter [bizfilings.com], based on estimated value. You have no idea what you are talking about. Please stop.

      • Actually he knows more than what you know.

        If you control the currency then taxes are just "window dressing".

        Let me explain it to you in super simple terms. If I control your currency, you can tax me at any rate you like. Sure you get some fiat money, but I get to set the rate/value enough to make any tax you place on me meaningless to me economically, I will just make adjustments to keep me where I want to be. What winds up happening though is that all those poor folks you think you are saving now have t

        • If you control the currency then taxes are just "window dressing".

          Yeah, if they controlled the currency they were being taxed in, which they do not. Your entire comment is therefore invalid, and there's no need to read the rest, but I did anyway.

          Let me explain it to you in super simple terms. If I control your currency, you can tax me at any rate you like. Sure you get some fiat money, but I get to set the rate/value enough to make any tax you place on me meaningless to me economically,

          The IRS sets the effective exchange rate, by declaring by fiat what the value of your wankbucks are. You don't get to decide how many they take. Plus, they don't have to take your wankbucks at all. They can simply demand that you pay them in USD, which is exactly what they will actually do. Because it's the IRS, the burden of proo

          • I guess nearly a century of being able to watch the Federal Reserve has taught you nothing.

            "The IRS sets the effective exchange rate"

            That pretty much sums up how ignorant you are.

            "The U.S. government has various tools to influence the U.S. dollar exchange rate against foreign currencies. An independent arm of the government is the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve. It indirectly changes exchange rates when it raises or lowers the fed funds rate."

            You might be more accurate if you said the Department

            • "The IRS sets the effective exchange rate"

              That pretty much sums up how ignorant you are.

              Oh yeah?

              [...]You might be more accurate if you said the Department of Treasury of which [...] The IRS is a part of the treasury

              So to be clear, it's all the same department, yet you think you caught me in some massive error? Nice one.

              "The U.S. government has various tools to influence the U.S. dollar exchange rate against foreign currencies.

              A cryptocurrency created by an American company is not a foreign currency, so that has exactly zero relevance here.

              Let me explain it to you in super simple terms. If I control your currency, you can tax me at any rate you like. Sure you get some fiat money, but I get to set the rate/value enough to make any tax you place on me meaningless to me economically,

              The IRS sets the effective exchange rate, by declaring by fiat what the value of your wankbucks are. You don't get to decide how many they take.

              Not only that, I am not discussing Exchange rates either, that is just a BS straw-man argument you just concocted.

              I quoted the relevant text to make it clear that you are discussing exchange rates, even though you don't understand that's what you're discussing. Facebook is not in control of the currency used for taxation. The government decides what the value of bartered items is for taxation (

              • How do stupid people like you make it through life? O wait... I keep forgetting, that's why most of you stay poor.

                Okay let me help you out, not sure it's going to work because your view is so narrow your mind is not able to expand. Lets start by asking you a question.

                Does the Government control MasterCard's Exchange Rates? No? Why not? Because they do not have that power. Maybe they will take it in the future but they don't have it right now.

                There are all sorts of Exchange Rates, none of which are set

    • Each time I watch Robocop I find the OCP eerily similar to the ilk of Facebook and Amazon. Even Google are building their "smart cities".

  • wtf? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Thursday June 06, 2019 @10:32AM (#58718862)

    "will be offered to Facebook employees who want to be paid in the form of the cryptocurrency. "

      in response... I owe my soul to the company store

    • "will be offered to Facebook employees who want to be paid in the form of the cryptocurrency. "

      in response... I owe my soul to the company store

      I'm not saying there is no chance of that, but don't discount pure old greed by employees either here. You might be surprised at how many will want this (I'd guess 10% at a minimum will want this) because they think they are sort of winning the lottery by getting paid this way. Back in the late 90s Internet Bubble I had a really good job that paid about industry average but the company was really great to work for. I would around 2000 chase dollars and leave that job. to my regret. We saw industry sal

  • I find this very strange. There is already a cryptocurrency called GlobalCoin [globalcoin.info]. It's not clear how serious a currency it is, since it isn't represented on the major sites like CoinMarketCap [slashdot.org], but it claims to have existed since 2012. Why would Facebook choose a name that is already taken - and if they did, why does the .info site still exist?

    Anyway, for the microtransactions that Facebook apparently wants to enable, a blockchain makes little sense. They are unlikely to enable general mining - they will almost

  • We'll hand over your private data...oh wait, they already do THAT anyway?

  • ... to the term "Social Credit" [washingtonpost.com]...

  • Is this the future of Facebook? Live, die, work, eat, sleep, breathe Facebookland 24/7/365? Your entire life 'shared' (and monetized), cradle to grave? People play 'Every Breath You Take' from The Police at their weddings instead of the Wedding March?

    Do your life a favor: Kill your Facebook account today. Take your life back.

    • Do your life a favor: Kill your Facebook account today. Take your life back.

      Awww.. if I did that, then I wouldn't be able to infrequently piss into their advertising metrics by talking about all the boats I don't own. Wha-hey, just bought another one! And here's a picture! (posts pic of the S.S. Minnow)

  • be able to screw everyone stupid enough to use facebook.

  • They do not want to compete against Bitcoin, because they do not really want to develop a cryptocurrency. As others have already pointed out, this goes against the idea of a single entity controlling it.

    They want to compete against Paypal.

  • has a whole new meaning when they can also cut you off from your money.

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