Facebook announces partnership with Coinbase to build Novi Digital wallet

Social media giant Facebook is now joining hands with US-based cryptocurrency market platform Coinbase to build Novi wallet. The social media company will work with the cryptocurrency platform to build a digital wallet that will enable people to send money internationally without any additional fee. Novi, which has been in the workshop for some time now, will be soon launching pilot programs in the US and Guatemala.

According to statements from the two companies, the digital wallet services will be first launched to anyone in the US except those living in Alaska, Nevada, New York, and the US Virgin Islands. Coinbase in a blog post on Tuesday confirmed its collaboration with Facebook for Novi via Coinbase Custody. According to the company, Novi will let people send USDP, a stablecoin pegged to the price of the US dollar, across the world.

Facebook digital wallet soon

"Coinbase Custody is a leading crypto-native platform and custodian that securely manages $180 billion of crypto assets on its platform. Over the past nine years, Coinbase has developed deep expertise in secure and scalable crypto infrastructure, which we initially built to power our own first-party applications," Coinbase said in its statement.

According to a statement, David Marcus, the head of Facebook's Novi project, said that the stable coin will be fully backed by the US dollar and is held 100% in cash and cash equivalents. Facebook believes that the use of Novi could bring a change to people’s money transactions as the digital wallet will offer a more cost-effective and successful alternative for day-to-day transactions. However, the US administration officials are yet to make their say on the digital wallet system being implemented by Facebook.

JP Morgan Chases says investors prefer Bitcoin over gold

The announcement regarding the launch of Novi digital comes only days after American investment banking firm, JP Morgan Chase, released a note to its investors claiming that more people are now choosing cryptocurrency over gold as a better hedge against inflation.

Investors had earlier stated that the cryptocurrency promises quicker returns than gold and was easily storable for a future value. However, Bitcoin remains highly volatile as it is still part of an unregulated market. The cryptocurrency was trading at $ 65,158 as of 8 am on October 21.

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