An exclusive source has confirmed to Finance Magnates that beleaguered social media giant Facebook is diversifying its product line with a cryptocurrency of its own – Facebook Coin (FBC). Users will have to register to use the coin, but Facebook will guarantee that wallets and transactions will be completely anonymous.
The development has not been officially announced, but reportedly the coin is to be launched on the Ethereum blockchain via an ICO within the next two weeks. Given the size and reach of Facebook, it seems safe to assume that the ICO will rival the 1.2 billion dollars that Telegram raised in its own funding round
the technical details are still being worked out but it can be confirmed that FBC will be an anonymity-based coin along the lines of Monero. In order to hold a coin, users will have to supply data such as name, address, phone number, mother’s maiden name and name of first pet. This is for security reasons; a privacy clause written into the smart contract will ensure that all transactions are entirely anonymous and completely untraceable
Interestingly, our source told us that Facebook will be advertising the ICO on users’ Facebook feeds. This is interesting because the company recently banned all cryptocurrency advertising on its platform. At the time, its product managing director said that Facebook wanted to avoid “scams and deception”, and the decision to overlook this new rule for its own cryptocurrency has naturally raised eyebrows. However, our source denied that there is any contradiction in the policy:
Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertising because too many of these companies were scams. This is completely different – Facebook’s ICO is a legitimate way to get more data, which is needed to power a groundbreaking new anonymous digital coin – it is not a scam, so there is not reason for it not to appear on the platform.”
