Facebook Globalcoin

Will Ripple’s Drive for Mass Adoption Receive A Boost from Facebook’s Globalcoin?

A report from Binance released on the May 15th, 2019 is pointing to the increased interest multinationals, and business conglomerates are showing stable coins. Giants like Facebook and Samsung are getting onto the stable coin market, integrating blockchain innovation into custom payment systems and digital wallets. 

The potential that such stable coins have to disrupt the global crypto and payment industry entirely is tremendous. Facebook’s global coin, for instance, is going to be utilized for payments across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.

The report further notes that companies such as Facebook are less risk-averse and therefore, have a greater incentive to push the envelope in the existing payments industry. Facebook is cleverly launching its much-hyped Project Libra in India as per a Bloomberg report. 

Facebook’s Globalcoin Launching in India

At the helm of the project is a tech team composed of PayPal alumni whose purpose is to Facebook’s Globalcoin’s utilization in peer to peer transactions and across significant e-commerce platforms as well.

In truth, India is fertile ground for the stable coin’s ability to ease remittances because the country has over 200M WhatsApp users and 480M internet users. Furthermore, over 191 million Indians also above 15 years of age do not own a bank account placing the country’s unbanked numbers only second to China’s 224M.

Speaking on the development, Morgan Creek Digital’s  Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano tweeted that “if Facebook launches the stable coin they are reportedly building, it will quickly become the most used product in crypto.”

In addition, billionaire investor Mike Novogratz has also named Project Libra both as a “big, big deal” that will lend credibility to crypto and “stunningly important.”

Similarly, Spencer Bogart of Blockchain Capital also said that Facebook’s plans will double or triple crypto users saying:

 “Once they own [Facebook’s global coin], it will be like being on the internet so people can spin-out and start owning Bitcoin, Ethereum.”

Facebook’s Zuckerberg has said that his platform aims to make remittances as easy as photo sending.

Facebook’s Globalcoin Will Only Fuel Ripple’s Growth

When the JPM coin was launched, there was a lot of speculation that it was out for Ripple’s jugular. The very same thing has been said about the recent build of stable coin’s in the market, including Facebook’s global coin. Some pundits claim that these would inevitably be “Ripple killers.” There is one pie in contention, which is international money transfers, right?  

Alluding to the Ripple and JPM token comparison, Brad Garlinghouse Ripple’s CEO said that Ripple’s ace in the hole was its innate interoperability made possible by InterLedger Protocol (ILP). All other stable coins seem to be proprietary assets for in house use, which implies that more and more business will keep building stable coins for their own use.

Consequently, the result of this exercise will be a deep fragmentation of the crypto market that mirrors today’s financial services industry. Besides the stable coins potential to create hype for crypto, all businesses that launch stable coins will still need to make a market for their unique tokens or use fiat to settle trades with each other.

Ripple Stepping Up in their Quest for Interoperability

However, if all these businesses used one independent and efficient settlement like XRP, which is already well set for the role, the crypto world would be healthier for it. A multitude of stable coins will only accentuate and exacerbate each coin’s inherent flaws which might eventually fan the flame for XRP, especially amongst banks.

The creation of multiple stable coins will increase delays, friction, and customer hassles, which are issues already solved by XRP. Through Ripple’s Xpring, the developer ecosystem, XRP is looking further into the future and has allotted $100M to support developers focused on gaming.

This will not only help in the monetization of the industry but will increase engagement as well.  Other innovative solutions built around Xpring’s platform that enhances interoperability between decentralized finance and blockchain include Wietse Wind and Kava Labs.