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While the recent bear market has caused many cryptocurrency startups to fail, some of the world's largest Internet information companies are hoping to apply the lessons to bring digital currencies to mainstream consumers.

Internet giants including Facebook, Telegram, and Signal plan to launch new cryptocurrencies next year, aiming to allow users to send money directly to contacts in their messaging systems, just like Venmo and PayPal are doing online cross-border remittance transactions now .

Most anticipated is Facebook's secretive cryptocurrency project, which, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter, is developing a cryptocurrency that would allow users of its instant messaging app WhatsApp to send messages directly to their friends. Send funds with family. The five people spoke on condition of anonymity because they signed non-disclosure agreements.

According to the above-mentioned people familiar with the matter, the project Facebook is launching is not limited to this. They are approaching some cryptocurrency exchanges, and may sell Facebook cryptocurrency to ordinary consumers through exchanges.

Telegram currently has about 300 million users worldwide, and they are now also developing digital currencies. In addition, Signal, an encrypted messaging service popular with technology geeks and privacy users, is also secretly developing its own digital currency. Similarly, in South Korea and Japan, Kakao and Line, the two largest local instant messaging apps, are promoting their own cryptocurrency projects.

For early cryptocurrency supporters, the reach of messaging app companies is clearly greater. Both Facebook and Telegram offer digital wallets that support cryptocurrency transactions to their hundreds of millions of users. More importantly, the new cryptocurrency projects that these giants are secretly promoting no longer need to be proven by the market, because their services and products have long been popular with consumers. Take Venmo as an example. It is more convenient for them to send payment transactions through mobile phones. They quickly attracted a large number of users and achieved success in the US market. In China, more and more consumers are willing to use the payment system in the instant messaging app WeChat.

Eric Meltzer, co-founder of Primitive Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on the cryptocurrency industry, said: "If the social network giants are willing to launch cryptocurrencies, it will be the current cryptocurrency industry. The most fascinating thing in the industry, in this competitive market, each company has its own advantages, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what 'crazy' moves they will make in the future."

In a previous statement, Facebook did not directly disclose that it was working on digital currency, and other companies also declined to disclose the status of their own cryptocurrency projects, but it is understood that most Internet giants seem to be researching digital currencies based on decentralized computer networks. digital currencies, and to some extent, these projects are also operating independently.

Like Bitcoin, if social media giants such as Facebook launch a new cryptocurrency, it will certainly enable convenient fund transfers between different countries, especially in some developing countries where many people cannot open bank accounts and bank accounts through the Internet. Shopping. But unlike Bitcoin, the digital currencies being developed by these Internet giants may not need to be obtained through energy-intensive mining methods.

However, if these instant messaging application companies want to issue cryptocurrencies, they may also face regulatory and technical issues, and this is actually the main reason why Bitcoin cannot be accepted by the mainstream. Since cryptocurrencies are not backed by central authorities such as governments and banks, they are vulnerable to criminals and fraudsters Soria, and the computer networks that manage cryptocurrencies are also designed to be difficult to handle massive transactions.

Richard Ma, CEO of cryptocurrency security audit firm Quantstamp, believes that all these Internet companies that want to issue coins will face similar technical obstacles.

Although cryptocurrencies have suffered a bear market in the past year, these big companies still invest a lot of resources in their respective encryption projects. According to people familiar with the matter, Facebook has more than 50 engineers involved in the cryptocurrency project, and a website called "The Block" has been tracking the progress of Facebook's cryptocurrency project.

Facebook's cryptocurrency project has been in charge of David Marcus, the former president of PayPal Consensus, since last year, and before that, Telegram raised a huge $1.7 billion for its own cryptocurrency project.

Facebook Inc. is exploring ways to use blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin, to keep a shared record of financial transactions across multiple computers, rather than relying on cards like PayPal or Visa. Large centralized organization.

If the value of the cryptocurrency is stable, it means that speculators (which are also the main audience of the current cryptocurrency) will not be interested in it. At the same time, this "stable currency" can also allow consumers to hold it with confidence and use it for fee payment transactions. There is no need to worry about the rise or fall in the value of cryptocurrencies.

According to previous disclosures by Bloomberg, five sources have given a brief introduction to the work of Facebook's cryptocurrency team, and they are likely to launch a cryptocurrency pegged to traditional fiat currencies.

If the value of the cryptocurrency is stable, it means that speculators (which are also the main audience of the current cryptocurrency) will not be interested in it. At the same time, this "stable currency" can also allow consumers to hold it with confidence and use it for fee payment transactions. There is no need to worry about the rise or fall in the value of cryptocurrencies.

In fact, several large companies have recently launched their own so-called "stable coins", and these "stable coins" are also directly linked to the US dollar. For example, the JPM Coin issued by JPMorgan Chase last month has officially begun to verify the application of this concept in the actual production environment.

Facebook Inc. could also peg the value of its cryptocurrency to a "basket" of different foreign currencies rather than simply pegging it to the U.S. dollar, according to three people familiar with the matter. This means that Facebook may hold a certain amount of dollars, euros, or other national currencies in its bank account to support the value of each "Facebook Coin".

Not only that, but if Facebook’s cryptocurrency project is launched, it may also need to upgrade its messaging infrastructure, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, and this transformation and integration work may take at least a year. Reaching Facebook Digital Currency to all users of these apps - approximately 2.7 billion people.

The real question, though, is how much control will Facebook, Inc. have over the cryptocurrency it issues?

If Facebook is going to track every transaction of every user, there is no need to use a decentralized blockchain system at all, because it will be more efficient to use a traditional centralized processing system like PayPal.

In addition, if it really wants to launch cryptocurrencies, Facebook may still need to deal with a lot of regulatory work, because according to current regulatory requirements, cryptocurrency exchanges need to authenticate and review customers who hold digital currencies.

So what if Facebook, Inc. doesn't have full control over the cryptocurrency it issues? Quite simply, Facebook will have a hard time making money from transaction fees, and it will be easy for criminals to use their cryptocurrency for illegal activities.

Facebook employees have told some exchanges that they hope to launch related cryptocurrency products in the first half of this year.

The cryptocurrencies issued by other messaging app companies may look more like traditional cryptocurrencies, that is, these cryptocurrencies will have fluctuating values, be decentralized by design, and provide users with more control.

Telegram was developed by a technical team exiled from Russia, they have always criticized the Russian government, mainly to help people in Iran and Russia (especially some dissidents) access financial services, where it is often difficult for these people to use traditional Financial system.

Last month, Telgram sent a letter to investors in which it revealed that the development of key components of its digital representative "Gram" network was nearly 90 percent complete. They also revealed that several beta versions of the “Gram” network are expected to launch in the coming months, the two investors who told the story declined to be named because they signed non-disclosure agreements.