Facebook planning to create its own cryptocurrency: Reports

Facebook is now exploring the option of creating its own cryptocurrency, report said on Saturday. 

According to the tech website Cheddar, Facebook is "very serious about it". 

The social media giant has not given out too much information but they plan to use cryptocurrency primarily for facilitating payments on the website. 

As per further reports, the company is also trying other ways to leverage the tokenized digital currency and its underlying blockchain technology across its platform, too.'

The idea was developed by David Marcus, who had was reportedly leading a new blockchain division at Facebook “to explore how to best leverage Blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch.” Before joining the company, he was the president of PayPal, which facilitates transactions between users in Facebook’s Messenger app.

Global spending on Blockchain solutions is expected to reach $2.1 billion in 2018, more than double of the $945 million spent in 2017, market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) said earlier this year. 

Facebook has over two billion users globally and launching cryptocurrency will allow them to make payments using a virtual currency like Bitcoin.