Messenger Coins or Bitcoins?

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TBI - February 28, 2019

The New York Times published a story today about the work Facebook has been doing on a new cryptographic token it plans to use in its Whatsapp chat app. Bloombergpreviously reported the development in December and wrote that the initial test case was likely to be a stablecoin targeted towards users in India, the world’s largest remittance corridor. According to the Times, more than 50 engineers are now working on the project, which could later integrate multiple Facebook messaging platforms. And they’ve been hiring like crazy.

As usual, though, the headline is misleading: “Facebook and Telegram Are Hoping to Succeed Where Bitcoin Failed.”

It’s hard to believe that this is still a recurring punch line in the mainstream media, when bitcoin has weathered multiple hype cycles, and in fact, appears to have continued to grow its “true believer set” in spite of the bear market.

To that end, check out this phenomenal chart from research firm Diar, and what now may be my new favorite metric to track going forward…the number of bitcoin addresses holding 1-10 BTC, which has shown remarkably consistent growth since 2012. Evidence that supports the fact the “digital gold” true believer base has continued to grow.