Meta’s crypto gets Zucked, now there’s ‘Zuck Bucks’
After Meta’s cryptocoin gets rejected, the company shifts to in-app tokens or “Zuck Bucks.” (Photo: Urban Journal)
Meta has drawn up plans to introduce virtual coins, tokens, and lending services for the metaverse to its apps. The alternative revenue streams using in-app tokens, informally dubbed as “Zuck Bucks”, aim to attract and retain users as Facebook and Instagram’s popularity declines and its $118bn-a-year ad-based business model is threatened.
According to company memos and people close to the plans, Meta is also looking into creating “social tokens” or “reputation tokens”, issued as rewards for meaningful contributions in Facebook groups, for example. Another effort is to make “creator coins” for particular influencers on Instagram. Meta has also been exploring providing small business loans at attractive rates.
Most of the efforts are in the early stages, but what’s more developed are Meta’s plans to integrate non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, onto Facebook and Instagram. Meta plans to launch a pilot for posting and sharing NFTs on Facebook in mid-May, followed by testing a feature that will allow membership of Facebook groups based on NFT ownership and another for minting NFTs.
But why haven’t Meta’s tokens hopped onto crypto? Well, they already tried and it was a bust.
Before Zuck Bucks, there was Deim, the Meta-backed stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. But after two years of multiple rebrands, congressional hearings, and a mass exodus of partners and staff, Diem finally called it quits.
Even though Meta’s reputation ultimately politicized the project because regulators were scared of making the tech giant even more powerful, the design of Diem was more transparent and regulator-friendly than other existing stablecoins. Meta has promised to not enforce its trove of cryptocurrency patents against other crypto developers—something that even Jack Dorsey thinks is a good idea.
Dorsey—co-founder of Twitter until he quit to focus on Block, a Bitcoin wallet startup giant (as oxymoronic as it sounds)—recently released a prototype of its hardware wallet, a device to help people “safely own and manage their Bitcoin.”
Block’s hardware lead, Jesse Dorogusker, tweeted an image on Wednesday showing devices made to look like rocks—yes, you read that right. Block announced that it would make fingerprint identification the primary and default method for users to access their funds. The ease of biometric access aligns with the many calls to make user experience in the crypto industry more intuitive and decentralized. The problem is that a smooth user experience is inextricable from security risks.
The company did say the physical wallet would be just one component in its crypto storage system and that it would have a corresponding mobile app with potential recovery processes available.
