FaceCoin: Here’s What Facebook Could Build In Blockchain And Cryptocurrency
CB Insights | April 30, 2019
Could blockchain be an answer to scandal-plagued Facebook?
While a “Facecoin” might not lay the company’s many controversies to rest, it could potentially address everything from centralized single sign-on to cheaper payments processing. A variety of different signals point to Facebook getting serious about blockchain and digital currency.
For one, in January 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned cryptocurrency when disclosing his annual project for 2018:
“There are important counter-trends to [the rise of Big Tech] — like encryption and cryptocurrency… I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects.”
Since then, the company has created a formalized group dedicated to exploring blockchain.
However, using the CB Insights platform, we learned Facebook has been experimenting with digital currency tech for quite some time.
See: Facebook Is Developing a Cryptocurrency for WhatsApp Transfers, Sources Say
From a new org structure to patent trends, we used the CB Insights platform to highlight Facebook’s blockchain ambitions and the possibility of a Facebook cryptocurrency — FaceCoin.
Timeline of major events
- November 2017 — Early publicity about Russian election interference using Facebook
- Jan 2018 — Zuckerberg’s personal goal for “Fixing Facebook” mentions experimenting with cryptocurrency and encryption
- March 2018 — NYT and the Guardian publish coverage on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, working with Christopher Wylie
- May 2018 — Facebook announces its largest reorganization ever, creating the blockchain group run by former Messenger boss (and ex-PayPal president) David Marcus, while also moving Instagram VP of Product Kevin Weil to the project
- June 2018 — Facebook reverses ban on cryptocurrency ads
- August 2018 — David Marcus steps down from the Coinbase board, citing a conflict of interest
- December 2018 — Bloomberg reports that Facebook is developing a stablecoin, or a cryptocurrency pegged to a basket of currencies, for transfers within its WhatsApp service
- March 2019 — Facebook acqui-hires Chainspace, which focused on smart contracts and payments, in its first blockchain acquisition
- April 2019 — Sources say Facebook is meeting with VCs to raise as much as $1B for its cryptocurrency initiative, which could help present the project as more decentralized
See: Eastern Caribbean Central Bank to Issue World’s First Blockchain-Based Digital Currency
What FB could build with blockchain and digital assets
As Facebook looks to redefine itself and expand its offerings, blockchain could be a significant lever to pull. Among many possibilities, tech commentators have theorized Facebook could build:
- Coin incentives for e-commerce
- Micropayments for services and content creators
- Banking apps
- Exchanges (competing with the likes of Coinbase)
- Identity tech
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Cambridge Alternative Finance Centre | Sep 19, 2019 The second edition of the Global Enterprise Blockchain Benchmarking Study provides new insights into the current state of the enterprise blockchain ecosystem. The study gathers survey data from 160 start-ups, established companies, central banks, and other public-sector institutions from 49 different countries worldwide. The empirical analysis specifically focuses on enterprise blockchain networks that have entered in production. Some Highlights from the report The banking, financial markets and insurance industries are responsible for the largest share of live networks: The trend indicated in 2017 has continued: 43 per cent of enterprise blockchain networks deployed in production can be attributed to Financial Services, far ahead of any other sector and industry. The specific use case of a network can be at times difficult to identify, but supply chain tracking, trading infrastructure, and document certification seem to currently dominate. Companies and institutions from nearly every sector and industry of the global economy have been exploring the potential of blockchain technology in recent years. The Accommodation and Food Services as well as the Healthcare and Social Assistance sectors come at a distant second place with 6% of all networks each. Cost reduction is the main value ...
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Read More
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Read More
Read More
Financial Post | Julius Melnitzer | Sep 17, 2019 In a general sense, what the Bureau wants to know is whether the characteristics of certain digital markets favour concentration — a process called 'tipping' The Competition Bureau’s recent call to Canadians to flag anti-competitive conduct in the digital economy is raising eyebrows among industry professionals. Certainly, the Bureau’s consultation seems far more concrete than what is evident from the regulator’s statement that it “is examining concerns that certain digital markets have become increasingly concentrated.” “The Bureau is looking to collect information and understand facts to determine whether increased concentration is truly occurring,” says Anita Banicevic, a competition partner in Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP’s Toronto office. “But it’s also looking to see whether it should take enforcement actions and beyond that, a fairly open call for complaints on which to base such actions.” Although Banicevic acknowledges that the Bureau has “always been driven by complaints to a significant degree” and “does have the ability and resources to weed out the genuine complaints from those that are meritorious,” she still finds the call-out disquieting. “I remain concerned that the call for complaints is essentially a matter of looking for issues,” ...
Read More
Read More
Globe and Mail | Lauren Robinson | Sep 12, 2019 Lauren Robinson is general partner at Highline BETA and executive director at Female Funders For decades the research has been clear: businesses benefit from gender diversity. Women are starting businesses at a faster rate than ever before, and leadership teams that include women provide better financial returns for investors. Investing in women is good for business. But for women founders looking to launch and scale successful businesses, access to capital remains a major barrier. There is consistent data showing that deal flow is often sourced from pre-existing networks. This explains why women entrepreneurs have a higher likelihood of closing an investment when a female investor is involved: venture firms are twice as likely to invest in women-led startups if they have at least one female partner on their team, and women angel investors place greater importance on the gender of the founders they are considering investing in. Women entrepreneurs are more likely to access capital when there are women making investment decisions. This is critical when funding for female founders is stalled at 2.2 per cent of the total invested in the United States. We can do better. Why venture ...
Read More
Read More
University of Pennsylvania | Wharton Knowledge | Sep 10, 2019 As the finance industry grapples with what the next generation of banks and payment systems will look like, it’s clear that partnerships are a linchpin for riding the wave of change successfully, whether you’re a multibillion-dollar traditional bank or a startup looking to bring cutting-edge technology into the mainstream. “The rails that these payment systems are built on date back 20-30 years – people are not starting to reinvent that alone; it isn’t an overnight thing – it’s incremental innovation adding up to something massive,” said Jennifer Lee, vice president focused on fintech at growth equity firm Edison Partners during the recent Fearless in Fintech conference at Wharton San Francisco. At the conference, which was co-sponsored by Knowledge@Wharton and Wharton Executive Education and organized by Momentum Event Group, Denise Leonhard, head of global credit expansion, business development and expansion at Paypal, used her company’s online payments system as an example of the challenges ahead. “We’ve built our infrastructure with all these different partners – payment networks, bank issuers … we’re all playing in a very messy soup,” she said. “What we’ve been building in the last 20 years has brought ...
Read More
Read More
BBC | Sep 16, 2019 Kickstarter has been accused of "union-busting" after firing three employees. Taylor Moore, the company's head of comedy and podcasts, tweeted that he and another employee were fired on Thursday, while tech and design lead Clarissa Redwine was fired last week. All three were heavily involved in the formation of a Kickstarter union this year, Mr Moore added. Kickstarter confirmed the employees were fired, but denied that it was because of their union activity. Mr Moore tweeted that he had worked at the company for six years. He said that when Kickstarter fired him they "offered me no real reasons, but one month's severance for signing an NDA" - a non-disclosure agreement. "I will not be signing it." "The union busting campaign that Kickstarter management is engaging in is illegal and wrong," he added. "It is an unforgivable abandonment of the values of an organisation that I have loved and served with my whole heart." Ms Redwine also tweeted at the company, saying: "I will not be signing your termination agreement containing a non-disparagement clause. You can keep my severance." See: A Digitized Staff Compliance Platform is a Must-Have She added: "Kickstarter's management continues to state ...
Read More
Read More
FCA | Sep 11, 2019 Speech by Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA, delivered at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance annual conference, Judge Business School. Highlights: The UK has led the rest of the world with developments like the regulatory Sandbox, we are very proud of what has been achieved through it. Early engagement is incredibly valuable for monitoring, supervisory and policy purposes. Working with innovative firms helps us achieve a better bird’s-eye view, enhancing our understanding when the overall landscape is blurry and changing quickly. 'Stablecoin' is a term that has been widely adopted by industry, but we do not take it to be a distinct category of cryptoassets. Something labelled as a 'stablecoin' could sit within or outside of our regulatory perimeter. Note: this is the speech as drafted and may differ from the delivered version. See: FCA confirms new rules for P2P platforms Last month, Facebook announced its plans for Libra, the stablecoin it is planning to launch in conjunction with a number of payment and tech firms. As has been widely reported, along with other regulators and central banks, we have been discussing their plans with Facebook. If this comes ...
Read More
Read More
NCFA Canada | Sep 13, 2019 JOIN US ON A STORYTELLING JOURNEY EVERY FRIDAY. Sep 13: Funding is Female with Jill Earthy EP37 GUEST: JILL EARTHY, Head of Female Funders (Linkedin) HOST: Manseeb Khan, Fintech Friday's show host BIO: Jill Earthy is an entrepreneurially minded leader who believes diversity drives innovation. As Head of Female Funders (powered by Highine BETA), she is empowering female leaders to become investors in early stage companies. Her background includes being an entrepreneur, supporting entrepreneurs in various leadership roles and working as Chief Growth Officer of FrontFundr, an online investment platform. She is a community leader and active mentor, currently serving on the national Board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada and as Board Chair of the Women’s Enterprise Centre in BC, and as Co-Chair of We for She. Jill was recently recognized by the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion award as a Community Champion, by Business in Vancouver as an Influential Woman in Business and by WXN as one the Top 100 most powerful women in Canada in 2019. About this episode: On this episode of NCFA'S Fintech Fridays Podcast, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with Jill Earthy the Head of Female Funders. The talk about what ...
Read More
Read More
TechCrunch | Kate Clark | Sep 12, 2019 Affirm, founded by PayPal’s Max Levchin, is said to be raising as much as $1.5 billion in a combination of debt and equity, according to people with knowledge of the company’s fundraising activities. Josh Kushner’s New York venture capital firm Thrive Capital is said to be leading the financing, with participation from the San Francisco outfit Spark Capital. Affirm declined to comment. Representatives of Thrive and Spark, existing Affirm investors, have not responded to a request for comment. Sources familiar with Affirm, which gives consumers an alternative to personal loans and credit by financing online purchases at point-of-sale, presume the round will be made up largely of a line of credit from a large financial institution, known as a warehouse facility. Affirm recently raised a $300 million Thrive-led Series F round in April at a valuation of $3 billion. Fintech companies focused on payments and lending, however, require a vast amount of capital to sustain operations. Those capital requirements coupled with the frothiness of the venture capital market justify this additional cash infusion. To date, Affirm has raised $1.03 billion in funding from Ribbit Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed ...
Read More
Read More
Le Monde with AFP | Sep 12, 2019 Bruno Le Maire expressed his hostility towards this cryptocurrency project, saying that "the monetary sovereignty of states is at stake" Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Thursday (September 12th) that France was refusing to authorize the development "on European soil" of libra, the cryptocurrency that Facebook wants to launch in 2020. "Considerable financial disorder" "The monetary sovereignty of states is at stake," said the minister at the opening of a conference of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) dedicated to the challenges of cryptocurrencies - without specifying, however, what concrete measures he wanted engage to prevent the spread of libra in Europe. See: Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency: Everything We Know In his speech, Bruno Lemaire described as "systemic" the risks that could result from this "possible privatization of a currency (...) held by a single actor that has more than 2 billion users on the planet" . "Any failure in the functioning of this currency, in the management of its reserves, could create considerable financial disorders , " justified the Mayor, also fearing that the libra is replacing the national currency in the States where the currency is weak or ...
Read More
Read More
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