Will Russia’s Social Media Giant Release Their Own Crypto?

By Rishma Banerjee

According to reports from local news outlet RNS, on March 28 Russian counterpart of Facebook, and the most popular social media platform of the country, VKontakte (VK), is considering developing its own cryptocurrency. The report which is based on a source familiar with the company’s plans says that the project involves the creation of individual cryptocurrency accounts for all the users of the platform. The article also claims that the firm has not yet decided whether or not to launch the coin.

According to the report, RNS has gotten hold of a presentation from VK that demonstrates that one of the ways users will be able to obtain the firm’s tokens is in exchange for their activity and time spent on the platform. The article clarifies that the coins earned this way could be accumulated, transferred between users, exchanged for goods and converted (presumably to fiat currency) via VK Pay.

VK Pay’s official website describes it as a cashless money transfer service that lets VK users send money to each other in messages using a credit or debit card. The service, RNS reports, was launched in June last year.

VK also has plans to integrate a tipping service so that users are able to send the bespoke cryptocurrency to the authors of posts that they like.

In 2017, eMarketer, a market research company, had forecasted that VK would surpass 42 million users in Russia before 2018. Undoubtedly, a top social media platform, VK, according to Alexa, is currently ranked the third most popular website in Russia.

Pavel Durov, VK’s founder who also co-founded the privacy-centric messaging service Telegram, is quite a known figure amongst crypto enthusiasts.

Recently, back in February, rumours had spread that Telegram was about to launch its own blockchain network, TON, by October this year so as to refrain from voiding its token contracts. Previously, the company planned to hold a public initial coin offering but reconsidered after receiving abundant funds — $1.7 billion — in its private two private token sales.