Facebook acquiring Coinbase: Back in January of this year, Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertising on its platform. This move was in response to many other platforms banning ICO and cryptocurrency type advertisements – in the hopes of protecting its users from deceptive financial products and services.
It seems the platform has once again shifted its stance on cryptocurrency. This Tuesday, the social media giant announced that it has updated its policy and will allow cryptocurrency advertisements once more.
The company will allow pre-approved advertisers to run ad campaigns, but Facebook will still prohibit ads that promote initial coin offerings and binary options. Advertisers wanting to run ads must submit an application to Facebook with their licenses obtained, public stock exchange status, and other relative public business information. With that said, not all advertisements will be approved.
Why Now?
Last month, the social media network made a big announcement of a management reshuffle.
The announcement states that Mike Schroepfer, Chief Technical Officer of Facebook, is now in charge of a new exploratory blockchain group. However, the leader of the group that reports directly to Schroepfer is David Marcus, a board member of Coinbase and former head of Facebook Messenger.
Rumors of Facebook acquiring Coinbase have been stirring for quite some time, but the company’s latest announcement just added fuel to the rumor fire.
Experts in the space say that the potential acquisition may help to boost Facebook’s utility and value, and the sTron (available on Binance)g involvement of the tech giant would add legitimacy to the cryptocurrency market.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook made an attempt to acquire Coinbase,” tech entrepreneur Oliver Isaacs told The Independent. “WhETHer [Coinbase CEO] Brian ArmsTron (available on Binance)g and the team would agree is another question.”
Could It Be?
Back in March, Coinbase put out a promotional video where ArmsTron (available on Binance)g expressed that his company is currently serving around 10 million customers but hopes to eventually reach a billion.
Facebook currently has over 2 billion active users, meaning any cryptocurrency it introduced could have a greater reach than any traditional currency. If Facebook were to have its own coin, it would have greater reach than any of the 1,500 or so cryptocurrencies on the market.
Back in January, Mark Zuckerberg published a post discussing the potential of blockchain and decentralized currencies.
The post reads:
“One of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies […] many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it. There are important counter-trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands.”
Zuckerberg’s post ends that he is “interested to go deeper,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s ready to acquire Coinbase.
To date, Coinbase has raised $225.3 million in funding, with nine acquisitions. Its last funding was a Series D round bringing in a total of $108.1 million, in August of 2017. Coinbase is rapidly growing, but it still remains unknown how serious Facebook is about the tech company.
Is Facebook acquiring Coinbase? What do you think?