It’s official – Facebook’s cryptocurrency arrives in Q1 2020 and is called “Globalcoin”

Following up from an earlier post I made this week, which you can read here https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@julianhorack/facebook-about-to-release-its-own-cryptocurrency-on-whatsapp-libracoin-with-its-base-in-switzerland-and-first-launch-in-india it appears that the much rumored "Facebookcoin" now has an official name and an official launch date. "Globalcoin" might be an odd sounding name, but its connotations are truly global.

Considering that Facebook, and more importantly WhatsApp, are used by over a billion people globally, their launch of a crytpocurrency will not only shake the foundations of the cryptocurrency industry but also the banking sector. And they don't like it when upstarts attempt to hustle in on their turf. Somehow Facebook is able to make these moves.

The good news is that Facebook as an item has passed its prime and is on the wane. But WhatsApp is still trending and it is there that the Globalcoin facility will be most utilized, not Facebook itself, although they are now owned by the same corporation, so are effectively the same entity.

Now it appears that India will not be the sole exclusive country to launch Globalcoin, as previously thought. Rather a dozen countries will have that honor in Q1 2020, less than a year from now. Beating them to it of course, is Telegram, whose TON cryptocurrency will launch by the end of 2019, beating Zuckerburg’s Project Libra enterprise by mere weeks. I’m sure he won’t like that but you can’t win them all.

Telegram already released their TON token last year in the biggest ICO in crypto history. They raised billions of dollars and it was so attractive to investors that Telegram didn’t even need to present it to retail investors like us, but simply sold tokens to private investors behind closed doors. And still they raised record numbers in dollars.

So we will have two social media sites each with their own cryptocurrency launching within the coming year from now, and the cryptosphere and the globe itself, will never be the same again. This could be a game changer for crypto. It will usher in the mainstream by the billion, and considering that cryptocurrency is just still a blip on the global financial radar at present with an infinitesimal amount of traders compared to say gold or forex or stocks, it may act as a tsunami of incoming fiat and user adoption that will shake up the industry in unimaginable ways.

In these interesting and exciting days ahead, the competition between these two big players could be stiff, and since Globalcoin will be more of a stable coin, it may not have as much of an impact on actual trading, like other cryptos that fluctuate with considerable volatility from day to day as traders buy and sell. Globalcoin will be fixed to a basket of fiat currencies and be more of a tool for remittance or sending money across borders easily, than an asset worth investing in for long term profits, I presume. The TON Telegram token may be a differently styled digital asset though, and that will make the evolution of these two social media coins quite diverse.

With Globalcoin going into talks and potential partnerships with the likes of banks and services like Western Union who are remittance channels themselves, Facebook is looking like it could become a bank in its own right. Who would have imagined back in the formative years, decades ago now, that it could come to this? The US Treasury Office and the US Senate are certainly interested at present and are acting as advisers apparently, so big banks and big government are involved. Therefore, just how much of an actual crypto this will be remains to be seen.

Remember that Bitcoin and crypto, based on the blockchain, is traditionally decentralized. That will never be possible with Globalcoin, so it may not be a cryptocurrency as we know it, but may still be run on the blockchain. Of course, even EOS and Steem, Dan Larimer’s projects are not fully decentralized, according to some, because they have a limited small amount of top people running it, 21 block producers or witnesses in the case of EOS.

Also XRP is not really decentralized and is used by big banking already. So we have these different degrees of hybrid digital currencies floating around, which are not true cryptos in the spirit of the term, despite being digital in fundamental form and shape.

Even Venezuela’s Petro – an attempt at a cryptocurrency backed by oil and which is apparently floundering today unfortunately – is a digital asset but is state run, so thus not a true crypto in the spirit of the term. Similarly the Russian desire to launch a gold-backed crypto Rouble will be state owned and run, and so nothing like the Bitcoin we see as the original example of a real cryptocurrency.

That being said, with only 30 million people globally involved in cryptocurrency, we are a very small market. Compared to that of Facebook and its social media brood who have over 2.4 billion users. If and when they get into using Globalcoin, they may well make history by shifting crypto into the mainstream like a trickle turning into a flood. Primarily their desire is to integrate the world’s unbanked into the finance industry via this digital payment facility.

I’m not sure if I like it, being a lover of Bitcoin as a decentralized real deal, compared to this hybrid watered-down version of a cryptocurrency. And with banks getting involved, I also see it as anathema to Bitcoin itself, contrary to the spirit of Bitcoin as empowering to the individual by excluding the central banking system- the very same villains who have enslaved the masses to their debt-based economic model, tied to the middle man, namely the bank, who takes a cut from every transaction.

Facebook will probably also want a commission on each amount sent, and maybe on each amount bought, enabling them to rake in billions for providing the facility, much like they do already via advertising, even if you think your Facebook and WhatsApp is free. As they say in the advertising and media industry - if you think it’s free, then you are the product.

Ref: https://coingape.com/facebooks-cryptocurrency-globalcoin-set-to-launch-in-2020/