Meta is working on a digital currency again: the ‘Zuck Bucks’ project
Despite the failure of Libra, Meta (formerly Facebook) is once again trying to develop a digital currency. The project was dubbed the Zuck Bucks.
Meta is again attempting to develop a digital currency . The parent company of Facebook and Instagram is exploring the possibility of creating new financial products. This time we are simply talking about a virtual currency, not related to technologies associated with cryptocurrencies.
According to a report in the Financial Times, company employees have sarcastically nicknamed the project ‘ Zuck Bucks ‘, Zuckerberg’s dollars.
Not a cryptocurrency, but a fully centralized and Meta controlled in-app token. Conceptually, it would be a currency similar to those of some popular video games, such as Roblox’s Robux or Fortnite’s V-Buck. In this way, the company should immerse itself in decidedly more explored territory – and above all less ostracized by governments.
The currency can be spent within Meta platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He’s sure to play a big part in the company’s metaverse
In parallel, Meta is also planning a second type of token, which could be awarded to users based on their social contributions. For example, a particularly active user on a certain Facebook group could be rewarded with the token, which she could then use to unlock emojis or other tools to customize her profile.
For the moment Meta prefers to maintain total confidentiality. “We have no news to share with you,” said a Meta spokesman in response to requests for clarification from American journalists. «Meta is constantly looking for new innovative products to present to people, companies and content creators. As a company, we’ve been working on building a metaverse for a long time , and that certainly includes the creation of payment products and services.”
The failure of Libra
Three years ago, in 2019 , Facebook presented Libra , the project to develop a cryptocurrency designed above all for emerging economies – and in particular for those countries where only a small minority of the population has a current account.
The project was to be developed by a consortium, the Libra Foundation , which initially saw the participation of several leading companies: from Vodafone to Visa, via eBay, PayPal, Uber and Iliad. Nothing came of it.
Already in the days immediately following the announcement, political hostility had reached an unsustainable level. “It is an attack on the monetary sovereignty of nations,” France’s finance minister said at the time. Similar invectives had also come from the rest of the EU, from some US politicians and from Japan.
The Libra Foundation has rapidly lost many of its key founders. PayPal folded after just three months . After several years of silence on the part of Facebook and the Libra Foundation, in January 2022 Bloomberg revealed that the Libra project – meanwhile renamed ‘Diem’ – was now definitively dead.
It seems that Meta hasn’t completely lost interest in cryptocurrencies and, more generally, in blockchain technology. The tech giant’s enthusiasm this time is aimed at NFTs , digital collectibles issued using the same technology as cryptocurrencies. As emerged in the past – and confirmed by the most recent FT report -, Meta is working on a way to introduce NFTs on Instagram and Facebook, following in the footsteps of Twitter.
According to the Financial Times, Meta will begin experimenting publicly with NFTs in mid-May, when the company is expected to allow the creation of Facebook groups dedicated to NFTs (in an attempt to compete with Discord), perhaps even allowing the minting of collectibles thanks to an integrated platform with its social networks.
