The money making business
DID you hear the rumour th that Facebook is considering la launching its own Bitcoinin inspired cryptocurrency? You didn’t? Maybe that’s because you ge get your news from Fa Facebook, and it just ... didn’t sh show up in your feed.
So is it possible? Could a so social media platform really tra transform how we pay for th things?
Well, think of it like this: in China (where Facebook is ba banned), every store has a WeChat payment option. What’s WeChat? It’s the Chinese version of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Google. All rolled into one ‘super app’.
However, WeChat’s big dumpling is mobile payments. In China you can order a meal in a restaurant, split the bill with your mates, pay your share, and take a photo of your dish to impress your friends — all on WeChat. The platform has more than one billion users a day and accounts for 3 per cent of mobile traffic in China.
By contrast, Facebook accounts for only 14 per cent of mobile traffic in the US.
Currently, Facebook’s founder, CEO and resident robot Mark Zuckerberg controls what 2.2 billion people view on their screens every day (with little oversight or regulation), and he knows more about you than your mother does.
But it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Just think of all the extra data he could hoover up from tracking our payments, like WeChat does? Zuckbucks! Still, he’s keeping his crypto close to his chest. Zuckerberg says creating an online currency is not really on his radar. True dinks. In fact, he’s only got what he calls a ‘small team’ on it.
Uh-huh.
So who’s leading this small team?
A bloke by the name of David Marcus, who was last seen running a tiny little app for Facebook called … Messenger.
And what was he doing before that?
He was the chief of some tiny little company called … PayPal.
Tread Your Own Path.
The Barefoot Investor holds an Australian Financial Services Licence (302081). This is general advice only. It should not replace individual, independent, personal financial advice.