Telegram, Facebook and Twitter - as leading social networks jump into a departing train of cryptocurrencies

As expected, soon Telegram messenger and the largest social network Facebook will launch their own (internal) cryptocurrency, with which users can make instant payments without resorting to the services of traditional players like PayPal and other financial service providers.

At the same time, payment solutions are being developed, although not entirely native, in other social networks. In particular, not so long ago on Twitter, it became possible to conduct transactions using the Bitcoin micropayment protocol of the Lightning Network.

Facebook
In late February, The New York Times reported that Facebook held talks with several Bitcoin exchanges about listing its own “stable coin”. It is assumed that the launch of a steablcoin oriented on the WhatsApp messenger will take place before the end of June 2019. At the same time, the new asset will be tied "not just to the dollar, but to a basket of different currencies."

To understand where Facebook’s interest in cryptocurrencies came from, you need to recall the statement by Mark Zuckerberg, which he made in early January 2018.

“Recently such important counter-trends as encryption and cryptocurrency have been formed. They take power from centralized systems and return it to people. At the same time, the risks of more difficult control are associated with them. I am interested in a deeper study of the positive and negative aspects of these technologies and their possible use in our services, ”said the head of Facebook, adding that 2018 will be a serious year for him in terms of self-improvement.

During 2018, Facebook really made a number of efforts to implement this strategy. Increased attention was directed to David Marcus, a former member of the board of directors of Coinbase and at the same time a vice president for the development of Facebook Messenger.

So, in August, Marcus announced that in order to avoid a conflict of interests, Coinbase leaves and will continue to focus on developing a blockchain strategy for the world's most popular social network.

At the same time, Facebook was drawn into a rather ambiguous story with a ban on advertising cryptocurrency projects. In particular, in January 2018, the company announced that users will no longer be able to place advertising for ICO and cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin. This restriction also spread to Instagram.

However, parallel development of its own products led to the conclusion that this decision was dictated by no means concern for protecting users from unfair advertising, but more by their own interests and desire to protect themselves from competitors. Taking into account the connection of Facebook with Coinbase, the statement of the social network in July last year that the latter was added to the list of “approved advertisers”, these speculations only fueled.

There are still no answers to many questions that arise when discussing the launch of a native token for WhatsApp. Nevertheless, it is assumed that Facebook is indeed active in this direction. In this regard, the February news that the social network is negotiating to acquire a number of blockchain-startups turned out to be quite intriguing. Among them were the Miguli-based startup Algorand, founded by MIT professor Silvio Micali, who specializes in the end-to-end encryption Keybase startup, as well as Basis.

The mention of Basis is really interesting: the company, which was founded by former Google employee Nader Al-Naji, last year decided to close the project and return $ 133 million of investments attracted to develop the same-named steylcoin. At the same time, it was stated that its business model was killed by the requirements of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

And if all this still remains at the level of rumors, the deal on Facebook's purchase of the British blockchain-startup Chainspace, which is creating a decentralized system of smart contracts for making payments and other operations in the blockchain, has been confirmed.

Is it really important?
Facebook's user base is more than 2.5 billion people, of which a significant portion comes from WhatsApp, which will likely become a test site for a wider deployment. Facebook Coin, as it has already been baptized, in a broader perspective can also be a real nightmare for such giants of the payment industry as Mastercard and Visa, making their offers at least irrelevant.

The other day, Mark Zuckerberg posted a lengthy recording in which he said that over the past few years he had been trying to understand the main tasks facing the platform.

“I believe that future communications will increasingly move to private, encrypted services, where people can be sure that they are talking to each other in safety and the content of their messages will not remain forever [in the app]. This is the future, which I hope we will help realize, ”wrote the founder of Facebook.

The main components of the new platform, he called private interactions, encryption, reducing the retention period, security, compatibility and reliable data storage

However, the cryptocurrency community has already raised such a question of conceptual values ​​of cryptocurrency as decentralization. Nothing says that the proposed Facebook solution will be decentralized. Quite the contrary: we are waiting for a coin controlled by a single issuer, which will determine the rules for its operation.

These concerns were confirmed by Mark Zuckerberg himself, stating some time ago that it would be extremely difficult to decentralize the amount of computing that Facebook is doing.

Another potential threat that the community is paying attention to is that, using its own cryptocurrency, Facebook can collect data about users. In particular, Dan Larimer mentioned this when he spoke about the problem of targeted ads on Facebook.

It is also interesting in this context, the findings of MIT analysts, in which they, speaking of possible ways to "destroy Bitcoin", mention Facebook.

"If the company manages to convince most of the users of Bitcoin and miners to use a special Bitcoin client from Facebook, the social network will be able to set the rules of the game and as a result will turn Bitcoin into a corporate version of Fedcoin [the national digital currency based on the US Federal Reserve System (FRS])" , - then the authors of the material suggested.

Telegram

The popular Telegram messenger is going in a similar direction. Unlike Facebook, the project, however, chose a different approach, first launching ICO for private investors for $ 1.7 billion. The launch of the main network of blockchain-platform Telegram Open Network (TON) is expected this month, but may be postponed due "The innovative nature of the development."

A few days ago, a demo video of the interface being in the development of the TON cryptocurrency wallet also got into the network.

The video demonstrates that access to the personal account of the cryptocurrency owner Gram provides a special QR code. The service will allow you to pay for games and collect donations for live broadcasts. It is possible that in the future with the help of Telegram you can order goods in online stores.

It should be noted that the project is also extremely classified. However, in February, a document appeared in the network, written on behalf of the founder of Telegram Pavel Durov (although without his signature), which states that agreements with investors of the TON project will be terminated if the launch of the network does not take place before October 31, 2019.

Earlier, another document describing the TON project appeared in the network, in which it is characterized as a “superserver” intended for processing micropayments and off-transactions using the Gram cryptocurrency. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in the ocean of developer plans.

It is assumed that Gram will be used to pay for goods, services, commissions (gas) for processing transactions and smart contracts. Cryptocurrency will be needed to make deposits that give the right to validate the blocks, as well as to reward for storing data in the TON blockchain. Also, the coin will give the right to vote to change or maintain the network protocol parameters.

In addition, as a means of payment, Gram will allow you to register domain names and hosting services based on TON blockchain solutions, hide IP addresses and circumvent the censorship of Internet providers.

It should be noted that the possibility of using cryptocurrency at the end of 2017 was announced by the creator of the Signal messenger Moxi Marlingspike. Since then, more specific statements from this privacy-oriented messenger user, however, have not been reported.

And what about Twitter?

Unlike Pavel Durov and Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has repeatedly stated that it is Bitcoin that sees the future native currency of the Internet. There are no hints that Twitter plans to acquire its own cryptocurrency either, and, moreover, Dorsey has recently been actively demonstrating his commitment to Bitcoin.

In particular, in February, he joined the Lightning Torch stock, and some time later said that he had acquired the Lightning node from Casa. Also, according to him, the Bitcoin microtransaction protocol will inevitably be embedded in the Cash App payment application from Square, another company headed by Dorsey.

In the Twitter network itself, meanwhile, the Tippin service was launched, making it possible to make micropayments with the Lightning Network.

Thus, we see that payment solutions do not necessarily include their own cryptocurrency and the difficulties associated with its creation. In this regard, it will be really interesting to see which of the proposed solutions will be the most successful.

Anyway, we can say that at the moment we are on the verge of really interesting and unique events that have the potential to have a significant impact on the entire cryptocurrency industry. Moreover, such solutions, as some experts believe, may potentially endanger Bitcoin’s status as the most important cryptocurrency.

Thus, according to cryptoexpert and CIO hedge fund BlockTower Capital Ari Paul, there is every reason to believe that 2019 will be the year of “crypto intranet” (private blockchains).

According to him, cryptocurrencies like those that want to run Facebook, can not really interest people who think about resistance to censorship and privacy, and will rather serve as another reason for high-profile headlines to mainstream media. However, according to Ari Paul, there is one important positive point in all this: such decisions will inevitably increase interest in Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies.