[BLOG] Leading Blockchain Commercialization

Facebook has jumped into the development of blockchain service.

Most recently, the news about the largest social media platform, Facebook, jumping into the blockchain industry has been the hottest topic. In the past June 18th, whitepaper of “Libra”, a blockchain project from Facebook has been released. Within the company, Facebook calls it the “Global Coin”. Also, according to BBC, the so-called “Global Coin” is expected to be released next year.

Facebook’s blockchain project, “Libra”

Based on what has been released so far, Facebook has established its subsidiary company, Calibra, and planning on creating Libra Association including globally renowned members such as Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Uber, Booking.com, Coinbase, and more.

Libra is working on embracing 1.7 billion people in the world without proper financial assets or services. According to a report from the World Bank Group, there are approximately 1.7 billion users without bank accounts or affiliated with bank systems. So the Libra project is focused on developing a system that people around the world who currently do not utilize institutional banking systems.

Libra is also planning on developing convenient transfer methods. Mark Zuckerberg has emphasized that financial transfer should be just as simple and as easy as transferring photos. Also, on June 18th, as Facebook revealed the expected release of Calibra, it had described the use of its features such as transferring of currencies, make payments, scanning codes to purchase coffee, pay for public transportation without physical tickets and more, with a click of a button.

The international transfer of the currency without institutional banks is following a similar concept as mentioned above. Through Calibra’s demonstration video, the public was able to get a glimpse of how the global coins can simply be transferred. At the point of transferring the global coins, the sender may transfer the coins to the recipient, and the recipient can convert the coins to the fiat currency for that country. In addition, global coins do not need central banks for the transfer and the sender is only responsible for small fees created from the transaction which is much less than if one was to go through the central banks for the transfer.

In following, Facebook’s “global coin” will not only be used on Facebook but also on WhatsApp and Instagram, for payments and international transfers. Facebook approximately has 2.4 billion monthly users, WhatsApp has about 1.5 billion users, and Instagram has about 1 billion monthly users a well. Libra project is composed of the user based on social networking companies mentioned and seems that it will facilitate the mass adoption of blockchain technology throughout the world.