by Jeff Brown, Casey Research:

Justin’s note: Facebook is in hot water with regulators.

Its offense? “Mining” your personal data and pawning it off to the highest bidder.

As you might expect, this is a huge money-maker for Facebook… It’s not going down without a fight. Instead, it’s trying to save its own skin by – get this – launching its own cryptocurrency.

It’s an ingenious scheme, as our good friend Jeff Brown explains below. Jeff is the editor of The Near Future Report. He’s also a Silicon Valley insider who’s invested in 111 tech startups – and profited on 95.3% of them. He was also a high-ranking executive at Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors.

That makes him the best person I know to speak on this subject. Read on for his insider insights on Facebook’s latest plans…

By Jeff Brown, editor, The Near Future Report

The news is out…

Social media giant Facebook plans to launch its new cryptocurrency during the first half of this year. Facebook is talking with several digital asset exchanges about listing FacebookCoin when it goes live.

Early intel suggests that Facebook is creating a stablecoin – a cryptocurrency that is pegged to an existing asset… most likely the U.S. dollar.

And because Facebook has a user base of over 2.5 billion people across several platforms (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp), it is in an ideal position to launch its own digital currency.

With over 2.5 billion users already, FacebookCoin will certainly gain immediate adoption… creating a multibillion-dollar business for Facebook overnight, thanks to transaction fees.

But that’s not what this is about…

Ethics Team

Simply put, Facebook is trying to save its own skin.

Recently, the company has been trying to distance itself from its actions. The evidence is everywhere.

For starters, rumors have it that Facebook is trying to raise $1 billion in venture capital (VC) to support its cryptocurrency project.

But why?

If you look at the books, Facebook is sitting on $41 billion in cash right now. It clearly doesn’t need the money.

But by getting VC firms involved with FacebookCoin, it will claim that the project is decentralized and not solely controlled by Facebook. It’s just a clever front to deflect scrutiny.

And this is consistent with Facebook’s action plan in response to the public backlash it has received.

Facebook already established an ethics team with independent members to deal with controversial issues. When issues arise going forward, the ethics team will make decisions about them… not Facebook.

And of course, Facebook can then deflect any backlash to the ethics team.

Facebook has been lobbying for additional government regulations on social media. That way, Facebook doesn’t have to self-police – it can simply follow orders. That also allows it to deflect public backlash.

If that doesn’t work, Facebook has one more play…

Read More @ CaseyResearch.com