Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Facebook wants to find out how cryptocurrencies could integrate into its platform.
The role of Facebook in all of our lives is different. Some are regular users of the platform, using it to catch up on activities of friends and family. Others are frequent contributors, sharing their day to day with anyone that will listen. Many businesses and media outlets employ Facebook as a direct route to customers and clients.
Whatever the social behemoth’s 2.1 billion users are doing, it’s future remains uncertain.
While the monthly active user metric continues to rise, the platform’s seeming inability to shift in line with the request of its users and with technological and social trends has led many to ask the question: is Facebook dying?
The Times They are A-Changing
If the latest news from camp Zuckerberg is to be believed, the answer is ‘not yet’.
In a start of the year post from Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and CEO suggests that the company is finally moving in line with technological trends and interestingly, what seems to have forced the company’s hand is cryptocurrency.
Zuckerberg writes:
There are important counter-trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands… I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.
The key element of this quote for us, and likely for many in the blockchain space, is the final sentence, in which Zuckerberg seems to suggest he will be implementing some sort of cryptocurrency technology into the Facebook platform.
The obvious next question becomes…
Which Cryptocurrency Will Facebook Choose?
Sure, Facebook could easily set up its own cryptocurrency and integrate it with the Facebook platform, perhaps in a similar fashion to that employed at Steemit. Alternatively, however, the company could use one of the existing coins (this depends on the proposed use case, of course) and save itself the hassle of having to develop and manage its own integration.
Another option would be, especially if Facebook doesn’t want to hang around, to adopt an existing cryptocurrency near term and use it as a sort of bridge or Beta test type coin, with a view to developing its own proprietary crypto-technology if the test results favorably.
Whatever happens, that Zuckerberg and Facebook are not just turning their interests to decentralization and blockchain technology but that they are highlighting it to the general public as a major focus of 2018 is a major validation of a bright future.
What coin do you think would work best with the platform? What will happen to the value of an existing coin if Facebook announces integration? Let us know below!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock, Wikimedia Commons
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