Zuck Bucks coming next month: Facebook’s Meta plotting its own money offering via crypto launch, NFTs and small business loans

Meta, the owner of social media giant Facebook, is plotting to bring its own digital currency to the market, Zuck Bucks, named after its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In addition, the company is reportedly also looking to launch a number of traditional banking services, such as providing small business loans.

Zuck Bucks will not be a standard cryptocurrency.

Instead, Meta is looking at embedding its own tokens into applications, so the company will maintain control over the digital currency, according to various reports, including tech publication. Gizchina.

The publication singled out the hugely successful Robux currency, primarily used in the popular kids game Roblox. The firm built a substantial businesses selling its Robux tokens and Meta is reportedly trying to replicate that success on its own platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

Moreover, Meta is looking into launching so-called ‘social tokens’ as well as ‘reputation tokens’, which “may be as a reward, for example, for meaningful contributions to Facebook groups,” according to a report in The Guardian.

Loans and NFTs

The company is reportedly also looking into a number of traditional financial services, such as small business loans.

In addition, Meta is reportedly also mulling to publish and share its own NFTs, via Facebook.

A pilot is planned for the end of next month, according to an internal memo, The Guardian reported. The company plans to run a test allowing “Facebook group membership based on NFT ownership and another for minting” NFTs.

Earlier this year, in January, the Financial Times revealed some of Meta’s NFT plans, for both Facebook and Instagram. Zuckerberg did confirm last month that NFTs are planned for Instagram.

Facebook response

Meta spokeswoman Lauren Dickson said the company could not comment at this time.

However, she did confirm that, as part of the further development and rollout of new technologies for the metaverse, the company is looking into which payments and financial services it could use.

Facebook is keen to expand and exploit the metaverse as it could become a mainstream way to make friends and even date, with nearly a fifth of young people ready to  ditch more conventional social media platforms.

With more than a tenth having already made their own metaverse avatar, data from  Zen Internet highlighted recently that 18 per cent of 16-24 year olds are already using the virtual platform, and a quarter will spend at least an hour on it by 2026.

This comes after Facebook, now run through Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Meta’ company, lost half-a-million digital daily users according to its latest report, with teens declining 13 per cent since 2019 – projected to drop by 45 per cent in the next two years. 

Almost half of 16-24 year-olds recently polled are considering using the virtual reality 3D platform to make friends in the future, with nearly 30 per cent saying it will improve their confidence.

It’s not just about making new friends though, with more than 35 per cent of Brits surveyed preparing to date through the site, and almost two-fifths interested in metaverse speed dating.

The research “highlights how important virtual interactions will be to the younger generation’s identity”, Jawad Ashraf, chief executive of digital collectables platform Terra Virtua, said. 

“It may be too early to predict exactly what the metaverse will become, but we do know it will open up completely new shopping, work, entertainment and social experiences.”