Facebook Cryptocurrency GlobalCoin Might Power Russia’s Massive Oil Industry

A local media from Russia has reported that Facebook’s upcoming Global Coin can potentially be used to value barrels of oil.

At the recently held St. Petersburg Economic Forum the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin said:

“We see their significant investments in the development of universal technological solutions for processing large data arrays, developing alternative forms of transport, including unmanned vehicles and ecosystems of the sharing economy. Greater flexibility often means greater volatility, and digitalization creates risks for maintaining commercial secrets and leads to the need to create new regulatory mechanisms, additional redundancy. Today, technology companies do not have high-quality answers to these fundamental questions.”

Facebook has been working with financial and technology companies in recent months to build support for its planned rival to bitcoin. The cryptocurrency, which has been linked to a Facebook project codenamed Libra, is expected to be aimed at developing countries where traditional currencies are less stable and will function as a “borderless currency. The stablecoin will be pegged to the U.S. dollar and is expected to be integrated as a payment tool on Facebook's popular messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger, and photo-sharing app Instagram.

The debut of Libra or whatever Facebook decides to call it could unlock a new era of commerce and payments for the social network. It could be used to offer low or no-fee payments between friends or remittance of earnings to families from migrant workers abroad who are often gauged by money transfer services.