World domination, phase two: Facebook ponders its own cryptocurrency

By Jaina Grey Published October 28, 2020

After forming an internal team dedicated to blockchain technologies, Facebook is reportedly jumping into cryptocurrency with both feet. Speaking with anonymous sources close to Facebook, Cheddar claims the social media giant is considering the release of its own virtual token for electronic payments.

“They are very serious about it,” an anonymous source told Cheddar.

Recommended Videos

This news comes just days after Facebook’s internal blockchain team went public. Headed up by Messenger chief David Marcus, the new team will be exploring how blockchain technologies could be used to improve Facebook.

“Like many other companies Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology,” a Facebook spokesperson told Cheddar. “This new small team will be exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share.”

It’s important to point out that Marcus is a cryptocurrency evangelist, as evidenced by his early investments in Bitcoin. He also recently joined the board of Coinbase, a popular cryptocurrency exchange. When asked if Facebook would be integrating cryptocurrency into its apps anytime soon, Marcus mentioned that he thinks cryptocurrencies have ample room to improve their effectiveness.

“Payments using crypto right now is just very expensive, super slow, so the various communities running the different blockchains and the different assets need to fix all the issues, and then when we get there someday, maybe we’ll do something,” Marcus said in an interview with CNBC.

Let’s put all this in context. This is big news if it turns out that Facebook is serious about potentially developing its own cryptocurrency. A “Facebook Coin” would have the potential to become the premier cryptocurrency, with Facebook’s massive number of daily active users. Creating and controlling a universal currency could put Facebook into a unique position going forward.

Already under congressional scrutiny for its privacy missteps, the development of its own cryptocurrency to rival Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even the U.S. dollar could attract the watchful eye of federal regulators.

Not to mention, if Facebook does in fact intend to develop its own cryptocurrency, it also casts the recent expulsion of all cryptocurrency-related advertisements from the platform in a particularly nefarious light.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Jaina Grey is a Seattle-based journalist with over a decade of experience covering technology, coffee, gaming, and AI. Her…

Topics

Computing

Microsoft has begun rolling out Copilot Code for building apps with natural language

The workplace-focused vibe coding tool can pull context from emails, documents, meetings, and chats.

Microsoft introduced Code last month as one of the three core parts of its revamped Copilot app. The app was pitched as an easy-to-use coding agent that lets users describe what they want to build in natural language, like an app, a tracker, a dashboard, an automation, or a workflow, and Copilot would build it for them.

Essentially, it's a workplace-focused vibe-coding app that turns existing work into a functional app, and Microsoft has begun rolling it out through the Frontier program.

Computing

AI agents are acting like rogues and causing a huge headache for US banks

US banks block AI agents over fears they could make unauthorised financial moves

Banking

US banks are facing a new kind of digital headache: artificial intelligence agents attempting to access customer accounts and perform actions that may go beyond what users intended. As AI tools become more capable of navigating websites and carrying out tasks independently, financial institutions are scrambling to prevent them from crossing security boundaries.

According to a report published by Axios on October 22, major US banks have detected third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts without authorisation. Some agents reportedly appeared to attempt actions independently of user instructions. The banks involved have not publicly detailed every incident, and there is no evidence that the reported activity resulted in widespread theft of customer funds.

Computing

Canva enters the AI image generation race with Craft, and it’s thinking beyond pretty pictures

The new model plans layouts before generating images, with precise editing and support for 30 aspect ratios.

Canva Craft Featured Image

AI can generate all kinds of pretty pictures, but getting it to spell a headline correctly or keep a poster's layout intact can be another story. Canva wants to fix that with Canva Craft, its first in-house image generation model. Rather than focusing primarily on photographs, Craft is designed around the posters, presentations, social media graphics, and other visual content people actually create. The goal is simple: spend less time fixing AI's mistakes and more time making something useful.

Canva Craft plans before it generates