sludgefeed.com
Facebook (FB) made waves in December when Bloomberg revealed that it is developing a stablecoin designed specifically for money transfers on its WhatsApp encrypted mobile-messaging app.
Now, a report by the New York Times reveals that Facebook’s development is far enough along that it is already holding conversations with exchanges about “selling [the coin] to consumers.”
According to four individuals familiar with the matter, Facebook has told the exchanges that it is hoping to release the crypto product in the first half of the year, indicating that the stablecoin could very well be available in the next few months.
While there has been no statement as to which exchanges have contacted, the use of the word ‘selling’ in the report may indicate that Facebook is looking to run its own token sale.
The report also reveals the coin will likely be pegged to a basket of foreign currencies, rather than a single currency like the plethora of dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Other details on Facebook’s blockchain effort have been difficult to suss out apart from the publicly available job listings. Interestingly, today’s article in the Times reveals the team is sequestered in its own office with key-card access preventing other Facebook employees from snooping.
This news comes a little over a week after Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he has thought about putting Facebook’s login onto the blockchain to improve the system of granting data access to third-party apps.