Zuck Bucks, named after Meta founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will not be a familiar cryptocurrency. Instead, Meta is leaning towards embedding tokens in applications that will have a central control by the company; like the tokens that are in use in gaming applications; such as the Robux currency in the popular children’s game Roblox. Roblox has built a huge business selling Robux and Meta may try to replicate that success on their own platforms.
Meta has not completely distanced itself from blockchain products; as the company is also considering publishing and sharing NFTs on Facebook. The source says the company plans to launch a pilot project in mid-May, according to a memo, and shortly thereafter, Meta will conduct one test allowing “Facebook group membership based on NFT ownership and another for minting” NFTs. The Financial Times previously reported on some of Meta’s NFT plans for Facebook and Instagram in January; and Zuckerberg announced in March that NFTs would be coming to Instagram.
In addition, Meta is exploring “social tokens,” or “reputation tokens,” which “may be as a reward, for example, for meaningful contributions to Facebook groups.” The company also appears to be exploring traditional financial services such as small business loans.
Meta is preparing Zuck Bucks digital currency
Meta spokeswoman Lauren Dickson said the company could not comment at this time. However, she confirmed that as part of the development of technologies for the metaverse, the question of what payments and financial services could look like is being studied.
Gizchina News of the week
Last week, the EU Parliament voted to introduce controversial measures aimed at combating money laundering. At the same time, lawmakers continued to discuss further tightening regulation of the digital asset segment in the region, as a result of which unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges could be cut off from the EU financial system.
The vote by European lawmakers took place despite objections from major market players; such as Coinbase and legal experts who warned that overly harsh privacy breaches could lead to litigation. As for the changes themselves, if the new rules took place, Coinbase; and other exchanges will be in need to report to the authorities when their clients make transactions in excess of €1,000. Before entering into force, these changes, the Parliament and members of the Council of the EU must agree on this.
Note that at the same time, European lawmakers are discussing the possibility of completely abolishing the lower limit on the size of transactions that exchanges must report to regulators. Such measures are explained by the fact that large transactions can be split into several small ones; which will allow the continued use of cryptocurrencies for money laundering.
