A few hours ago, David Marcus, board member of the former Libra (now Diem) and leader of Novi and the whole fintech part of Facebook, published a long blog post on Medium about the company’s launch of a cryptocurrency wallet.
Marcus emphasizes from the outset that the purpose of the article is to delve into the potential of this area for Diem and Novi, for which a digital wallet has been in the works for over two years.
The watchword, in fact, is not “crypto” but more appropriately just “digital” as the stablecoin that the company intends to create is a centralized product and obviously controlled by Facebook.
Facebook and the unbanked
As Marcus points out, there are nearly 2 billion unbanked globally, meaning without a bank account, 62 million of which are in the US alone.
“Throughout our journey building Novi, we have talked to many people who are excluded or underserved by the current system. I was shocked to hear that many were eligible to have bank accounts – in fact, many of them had accounts before. They decided they couldn’t afford unexpected fees, and would rather pay a predictable 10% to cash a check, rather than be blindsided by fees they couldn’t cover,” Marcus explains in the post.
But these people do have a phone and an Internet connection, so it would certainly be easy for them to get hold of a cryptocurrency wallet, for example.
Of course, nothing new: this is a narrative that the crypto world has always supported, so Marcus’ idea is certainly not revolutionary. What could be revolutionary is that a giant like Facebook indirectly supports the world of cryptocurrencies and therefore unbundles its use.
As we explained before, Facebook stablecoin would obviously be centralized and, therefore, far from the world of Bitcoin and real cryptocurrencies. Introducing a wallet on Facebook could lead people to explore the topic and buy BTC and the like.
In fact, when Libra was first announced, all the big influencers in the cryptocurrency world were happy with the news precisely because they were advertising cryptocurrencies and the blockchain.
“Given Facebook’s reach, some people think that Novi will immediately be used by hundreds of millions of people globally,” Marcus rightly explains.
The KYC for Facebook’s wallet
After all the former Libra’s problems with banks, regulators, and partners, it is evident that the upcoming wallet would require KYC.
Marcus, in fact, states in his blog post:
“Novi requires full customer due diligence, including identification through the uploading of a government-issued ID, so onboarding new customers will take time.”
But this, unfortunately, goes against the “noble” purpose of helping the unbanked, who in most cases are also unbanked for lack of ID or at least internationally recognized documents. Unlike cryptocurrency wallets, then, Novi will require user identification to use the app and stablecoin.
The wallet and NFTs
A few weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had predicted that Facebook could become a sort of metaverse, and Marcus now indirectly predicts that Novi’s wallet could also support NFTs.
“Wallets would need to support NFTs,”
David explains at the conclusion of his article, although it is not yet known how or if Facebook will launch its own Non-Fungible Tokens.
