After months of vague reports about Facebook’s stablecoin, this week brought a flood of details: now we know that the coin, which has been internally known as “Globalcoin,” will be launched sometime this month. Additionally, CNBC reported yesterday that 100 of Facebook’s employees are known to be working on the project.
CNBC made this discovery by analyzing LinkedIn profiles, which means that there could be even more people dedicated to the crypto project who may not have up-to-date profiles or do not have LinkedIn at all.
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The project’s team is expected to grow by at least 40 more members within the relatively near future–more than 40 job openings related to the project are listed on the project’s “Careers” page.
The Network is Far More Public Than Many Thought it Would Be
While many speculated that Facebook’s cryptocurrency runs the risk of over-centralization, the social media giant is reportedly taking steps to prevent itself from becoming too centralized. Finance Magnates reported earlier this week that the crypto network would have a hundred nodes that will be responsible for confirming transactions on the network.
Polychain Capital CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee said earlier this year at Consensus 2019 that he thought that publicizing the network’s structure would be a wise move for Facebook.
“I think given all the problems that Facebook has had with policing their platform and things like that, I think that the strategic move for Facebook would actually be to build public infrastructure,” he explained. “And that public infrastructure could be incorporated onto all the Facebook platforms, which of course are proprietary. But that public infrastructure, if they don’t try to own it, I think that’s where they will have the most success.”
But Facebook’s crypto nodes can’t be just anyone–entities who wish to become nodes for Facebook’s cryptocurrency will reportedly have to cough up $10 million. One hundred nodes at $10 million a pop–that’s an easy $1 billion for Facebook.
Still, Facebook claims that the aim of launching the crypto network is largely humanitarian. According to its career descriptions, “our ultimate goal is to help billions of people with access to things they don’t have now — that could be things like healthcare, equitable financial services, or new ways to save or share information.”
Building Up the Roster
So far, the project–whether its goals be humanitarian or capitalistic–has garnered an impressive roster of C-level executives.
David Marcus, who is heading up the project, served as a board member for crypto wallet and exchange service Coinbase. Prior to that, he was the president of PayPal.
Eric Nakagawa, one of Facebook’s developers, will serve as the project’s “head of open source.” In the past, Nakagawa has been at the helm of several other open-source projects, including PyTorch’s artificial intelligence software. Nakagawa was also the CEO of “I Can Has Cheezburger?”
Finance Magnates reported last week that there are mixed expectations for what the project will bring to the world. Some analysts predict that the coin could eventually replace Tether’s stablecoin; others, looking back at Facebook’s mishandling of its users’ data, are not so bullish on the project.
Facebook decided to proceed with the launch of the coin this month following talks with US regulators.
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