Facebook to Launch Cryptocurrency Soon

By: Yassmine ElSayed

CAIRO, Mar. 2 (SEE) - The New York Times quoted sources that facebook has held talks with exchanges about listing its cryptocurrency .

The most anticipated but secretive project underway aims at a coin that users of WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, could send to friends and family instantly.

Facebook employees told the exchanges that they are hoping to get a product out in the first half of this year.

Facebook has more than 50 engineers working on its project, three people familiar with the effort said.

Facebook has been coy about what it is building. The team is in an office with separate key-card access so other Facebook employees cannot get in, according to two Facebook employees.

The Facebook effort, which is being run by a former president of PayPal, David Marcus, started last year after Telegram raised an eye-popping $1.7 billion to fund its cryptocurrency project.

 Telegram, which has an estimated 300 million users worldwide, is also working on a digital coin.

Telegram, which was started by a team of Russian exiles, has prided itself on thumbing its nose at governments. This could help Telegram in places like Iran and Russia, where people especially dissidents have difficulty using the traditional financial system.

Telegram sent a letter to its investors last month saying that it was 90 percent done with the key components of the network that would house the Gram, the name for its digital token.

The company has told investors that it hopes to have some version of the system out in the next few months, according to two investors who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.