Facebook crypto rumored to be revealed in June

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Lots of buzz has surrounded Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans, with leaks about how it will be implemented and speculation about how it will perform. We’re about to get a lot more certainty about their plans, as The Information reports that the social media giant will make a public announcement in June.

The crypto, rumored to be named GlobalCoin, is expected to allow users to process transactions directly over Facebook. It will also allow Facebook employees to be paid via the new digital currency.

As part of this new report, we can now expect that Facebook will set up physical locations to sell the cryptocurrency. Facebook will also allow businesses to pay a $10 million fee to operate as nodes, in an effort to decentralize the network.

It’s unclear if GlobalCoin will launch in June, or simply be formally announced. If it is launched, that would be radically different from previous rumors that suggested the currency wouldn’t be available until early 2021.

Facebook has been working on this crypto project for some time now, forming a blockchain taskforce in May 2018. Rumors that it would lead to a crypto started popping up in December, and Facebook has been aggressively acquiring talent, buying out other blockchain related companies, ditching the projects they had been working on to get their staff fully working on their own projects. 

Despite the hype around the project, some analysts have suggested that it may not take off as much as you’d expect for a company with 2 billion users. Due to their strongest demographics either being poor young people or elderly luddites, it was suggested that they might miss out on the more affluent demographics who have already made their decisions on the crypto industry.

That will make June a big make or break month for Facebook. They’ve spent millions developing this project, and when they reveal the first solid details, the industry will finally be able to weigh in with confidence on if it’s a worthwhile project. There’s a very real possibility that everything a Facebook coin can do, another coin could do better.