According to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, the social media giant is "recruiting dozens of financial firms and online merchants" towards this goal. Meanwhile the cryptocurrency based system would use a digital coin similar to bitcoin. Reportedly Facebook, on its part, has said it is exploring ways to leverage the power of Blockchain technology.
Previously in a February interview with Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was "potentially interested" in putting the Facebook login on the Blockchain technology. Zuckerberg told Zittrain "He is thinking about going back to decentralized or Blockchain authentication and although he haven't figured out a way to make this work out but this is around authentication and basically granting access to your information and to different services".
Moreover Facebook last year promoted one of its senior engineers Evan Cheng as the Director of Engineering at its recently launched Blockchain division. Surprisingly after the news of Facebook looking to launch its cryptocurrency, the crypto markets saw a major boost with total capitalization reaching nearly $10 billion. As per reports, this is the highest level since the bitcoin boom.
