Facebook is due to release the white paper for its GlobalCoin cryptocurrency, in the coming days. As with everything related to the social media giant, their proposed venture into the cryptocurrency space has been met with much debate.

Many people have arguments both for, and against, Facebook’s GlobalCoin. Arguments range from the usual “they just want more data” to “they will advance the blockchain industry”. Personally, I think there is something to be said for both stances.

In my honest opinion I think that Facebook’s GlobalCoin will be good news for Bitcoin and other legitimate cryptocurrencies.

What is ‘GlobalCoin’

I realise that some of you may be wondering what GlobalCoin even is. As such, before explaining my stance I thought I would take some time to give a bit of background.

GlobalCoin is the native cryptocurrency to Facebook’s announced blockchain venture. They wish for their cryptocurrency to become a global payments solution. According to the BBC, Facebook wish for their GlobalCoin to provide “affordable and secure ways of making payments”.

They will be attempting to provide banking services to those who are unbanked. And will be “competing with banks and reducing consumer costs”.

Facebook’s social media ecosystem, which includes WhatsApp and Instagram, will be its first point of implementation. However, they have expressed their desire to get it accepted by other online merchants.

How Does This Help Bitcoin & Others?

Simply put, mass awareness. Whether you like them, or not, you cannot deny the size of Facebook’s global user base.

According to Zephoria Digital Marketing, as of March 31st 2019 the Facebook user base tops 2.38 billion. That is over 30% of all people alive ((2.38b / 7.53b)*100).

Of that 2.38 billion, over 1.56 billion people log in to Facebook on a daily basis. Again, this is a significant portion of the world’s population, roughly 20% of it ((1.56b / 7.53b)*100).

Due to the nature of the technology, and lack of clear regulation, getting accurate statistics on Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency) usage is nigh on impossible. If we take the best case scenario of each BTC wallet created representing a user there are roughly 32 million active users of the BTC blockchain.

While we know that 32m wallets does not mean 32m users, for our calculation we will be idealists and say it does. Using that number we can easily decipher that, the best case scenario (though extremely unlikely) for BTC is a marginal 0.42% of people using its blockchain.

Using the numbers above it is easy to see that Bitcoin’s user base is incomparable to Facebook’s. However, the social media giant’s dip into the pool of cryptocurrency will surely raise awareness of the industry in general.

It would be ignorant to believe that, of Facebook’s billions of users, a significant portion of people won’t explore the industry further. I think it is fair to say that, Facebook’s GlobalCoin will add some legitimacy to the entire blockchain space.

I think it also fair to say that Facebook’s shady history regarding the privacy of their users will also cause more people to turn to Bitcoin in favour of GlobalCoin.

Basically put, I think that the release of Facebook’s GlobalCoin will inadvertently raise awareness of Bitcoin and speed up the process of regulating the entire crypto/blockchain industry as a whole.

When a company of Facebook’s size, and value, starts talking governments around the world start listening. As such, GlobalCoin could be the catalyst to kick start mass adoption.

Love, peace and happiness.