Banned in Russia, Meta is again working on its own currency,
despite the failure of the first attempt. The Financial Times writes about the company’s plans. According to the newspaper, employees name the currency Zuck Bucks after founder Mark Zuckerberg. Unlike the Libra project, this unit will not be based on the blockchain, but will allow you to buy NFT tokens on social networks. Prior to this, the company confirmed that virtual objects will become part of the metaverse. Testing of the digital currency will begin in May, the Financial Times specifies. And in the future, the company wants to expand its use and even issue loans.
Why Meta has its own payment unit? And will it interest users? Vladislav Titov, head of the Community Lab, answered these questions of Kommersant FM: “There is nothing difficult in motivating users, including with quite useful and interesting features within a social network, or with plans on how they can get money through for a while.
When NFT becomes more expensive, the question of conversion arises, on which someone always earns. In some cases, this currency can be convenient, it can be conditional bonuses, points that you can give to your friends for a birthday, to some blogger, receive, buy some virtual goods. In addition, such a currency allows you to approach it more flexible and multi-level. If you try to build all this on the basis of ordinary classic dollars or rubles, it turns out to be much more boring, sadder, and all this works less well in a model in which the user is interested in earning new tokens, rubles or dollars.”
In 2019, Meta, banned in Russia, tried to launch the Libra cryptocurrency. The project partners are PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and eBay. But soon the American regulator became interested in him. It considers any US-issued tokens to be a security. Large players eventually left the project, all assets were sold. It is possible that this time the company was better prepared for possible claims, says Artem Genkin, CEO of the Consulting and Analytical Union:
“It seems that this time the lawyers have found reservations or loopholes in American law that will allow them in this case not to fall under the regulation of the United States Securities Commissions. With the huge financial and GR resources that this corporation has, it apparently did not waste time and tried to somehow preliminarily agree with the regulator, and, perhaps, with representatives of the legislature that they would not take the initiative, at least with hostility, as it was the first time.
In my opinion, they will bet on the fact that the virtual environment in which transactions take place is not under the jurisdiction of the United States, it is not subject to regulation, it has a certain gaming, virtual, non-formalized status.
It is very interesting how this logic will stand in the courts and in communication with the regulator, and it is not clear who will win.”
The claims of the Securities and Exchange Commission led to the closure of the TON project from Pavel Durov. Investors have invested almost $2 billion in the blockchain platform. But the court banned Telegram from issuing its cryptocurrency.