In an attempt to further diversify the services they provide as well as make it so that users could potentially end up having an experience that covers so many areas that they never have to navigate away from the platform, Facebook started to experiment with the creation of digital money. A lot of people considered this to be the first of many corporations that would be eager to hop onto the cryptocurrency bandwagon after all of the good press that bitcoin got, but the fact of the matter is that Facebook’s attempts to create its very own virtual cash system, named Libra, have been stalled on several occasions.
In an attempt to bring some legitimacy to their cryptocurrency project, Facebook starting collaborating with PayPal. This was ostensibly done in order to provide a little more context on how this currency would be traded and how it would be used to conduct actual transactions on the site as well as potentially being used in a wide variety of other sites as well thereby expanding Facebook’s reach well beyond its own borders.
However, recent news has revealed that PayPal will no longer be participating in the project, and they are pulling all their support for it completely. While PayPal mentioned in its statement that it believes in the Libra project and wishes it all the best, the fact of the matter is that a lot of government entities have been highly critical of Libra, saying that the lack of regulation of a corporate backed currency could be detrimental to the world’s economy. Whether or not this had an impact on PayPal’s decision is not exactly clear at this point in time, but it is fair to say that this has dealt yet another blow to Facebook’s attempts to establish their own cryptocurrency, and it might just make it even more difficult for them to get it off the ground.
Image: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Read next: Mark Zuckerberg Defends Facebook End-to-End Encryption Strategy
In an attempt to bring some legitimacy to their cryptocurrency project, Facebook starting collaborating with PayPal. This was ostensibly done in order to provide a little more context on how this currency would be traded and how it would be used to conduct actual transactions on the site as well as potentially being used in a wide variety of other sites as well thereby expanding Facebook’s reach well beyond its own borders.
However, recent news has revealed that PayPal will no longer be participating in the project, and they are pulling all their support for it completely. While PayPal mentioned in its statement that it believes in the Libra project and wishes it all the best, the fact of the matter is that a lot of government entities have been highly critical of Libra, saying that the lack of regulation of a corporate backed currency could be detrimental to the world’s economy. Whether or not this had an impact on PayPal’s decision is not exactly clear at this point in time, but it is fair to say that this has dealt yet another blow to Facebook’s attempts to establish their own cryptocurrency, and it might just make it even more difficult for them to get it off the ground.
- Also read: EU Court Rules against Facebook, Content Might be Removed Internationally from the Platform
Image: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Read next: Mark Zuckerberg Defends Facebook End-to-End Encryption Strategy
