New York Times: Facebook Is Seeking $1 Billion In Venture Capital For Crypto Project

A new report by the tech reporter Nathaniel Popper on New York Times (NYT) emerged in the daily cryptocurrency news on April 8, showing that Facebook is seeking support from various venture capital (VC) firms to develop its long awaited digital token.

Citing sources that are familiar with the matter, Popper tweeted that Facebook is seeking a $1 billion sum in order to fund and develop its cryptocurrency project. He also stated that seeking outside investment could help the project a lot and go in line with the crypto community and its decentralized ethos.

“Given that one of the big allures of blockchain projects is the decentralization, getting outside investors could help Facebook present the project as more decentralized and less controlled by Facebook.”

Popper also added that the reported project is a stablecoin that would be pegged to a basket of foreign currencies that will be held in bank accounts. The first rumors for the “Facebook Coin” or Facebook’s digital token surfaced last December in a report from Bloomberg when the publication said that the token would be used for money transfers made within the WhatsApp messenger service.

In February 2019, new reports showed that the digital token by Facebook would be usable across the Facebook Messenger App, WhatsApp and Instagram which would give it exposure to some 2.7 billion users each month. According to anonymous sources to NYT, Facebook employed over 50 engineers to develop this new digital token – and started shopping the “Facebook Coin” name around to several crypto exchanges.

When it comes to actual venture capital, the founding partner of Future Perfect Ventures Jalak Jobanputra in February said that the crypto bear market had deeply affected VC firms. When asked if there is a trend of discounted venture evaluations in the crypto space, he said:

“Given how much the volumes have decreased in the last year, I wouldn’t be surprised if we are seeing valuations come down on the secondary markets for some of these companies.”