Mark Zuckerberg Seeks Ways To Implement Cryptocurrency Into Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday his company plans to study cryptocurrencies and other decentralizing technologies as part of a larger bid to improve the social networking service and give power back to the users, CNBC reported.
In a Facebook blog post, Zuckerberg outlined what he called personal challenges noting that one is to study the “positive and negative aspects” of cryptocurrency and encryption.
“There are important counter-trends to this — encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands,” Zuckerberg wrote in his 2018 mission statement.
Zuckerberg went on to state his aspirations for this year noting that he wants to "fixing important issues" in technology, media and government. “I’m looking forward to bringing groups of experts together to discuss and help work through these topics,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg called cryptocurrencies one of the most interesting questions in technology right now urging to “take power from centralized systems” by employing uses for “encryption and cryptocurrency putting power back into people’s hands.” He added that today, many have lost faith that “technology would be a decentralizing force.”
“There are important counter-trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands…I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services,” he said.
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook has also endorsed Bitcoin saying the cryptocurrency has “great potential” to become the “cyber equivalent of gold.”
“If Bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold it has a great potential left,” Thiel said, “Bitcoin is mineable like gold, it’s hard to mine, it’s actually harder to mine than gold. And so in that sense it’s more constrained,” he added.
Bitcoin surpassed PayPal’s $70B market cap in August when it was worth only $4,300; at the time Bitcoin was valued at $71,141,374,550, Coinivore reported.
Facebook’s market cap is currently 542.95B trading at $186.85 a share, up 1.37%, according to Google Finance NASDAQ summary at the time of this report.
With platforms such as Facebook embracing cryptocurrency, mainstream adoption may come sooner than later. Already, websites like Yours and Steemit pay users, with more sites like onG.Social planning to do the same in the near future.
Maybe Facebook sees it is getting behind the pack?
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I hardly ever use Facebook now. The advertising annoys me too much. I prefer Steemit and I'm sure there will be more alternatives to the social media sites that seem more interested in making huge profits than anything else.
Thats true. This is just what I was talking with my friends. FB is too bored unless you follow pages that are interesting for you. I do use more steemit too, so many pople sharing really goo stuff.
I am helping work on a Facebook replacement for the crypto community then the world onG.Social allows cross-posting to all of ur favorite mainstream social networks and in the future alternative networks like Steemit too while also paying you cryptocurrency onG.
onG.Social
Any reason why Facebook couldn't just put their product on a blockchain and replace steemit? It would truly allow grandma and older folk to dabble in cryptocurrency for producing content.
That would completely represent the tipping point in cryptocurrency adoption by the masses...
Yeah he should cos crypto rules
I guess we had all better go on facebook and recruit all of our friends into steemit now
yah let him keep studying it. Closest thing he will get too is Ripple type centralization. Steemit beware :)
These mega data “banks” of Facebook, Amazon, and Google have generated billions of dollars for a few people. They make this money by selling our data. With Steemit we have somewhere that pays us directly for our data (posts).
Data is the currency of the future. We are taking control of our own data. It’s exciting from a freedom perspective and it’s potential for encouraging equality and a voluntary society.
Bye bye facebook