The beginning of February '22 will be remembered for one thing: Facebook — and the tech market it has come to represent — had a terrible quarter.
The payment operation, which has been awaiting regulatory approval for three years, will first focus on small merchants and will be implemented gradually in the South American country.
We discuss the Facebook pivot into the metaverse and its rebrand into Meta. Our analysis touches on the competitive pressures faced by the company from big tech players, other ecosystem builders, and limits to growth for a $1 trillion business that likely motivated this refocus. We further dive into network effects around platforms, and why super apps and financial features are attractive, and how owning the hardware is a required defensive strategy. Lastly, we discuss these development through the crypto and Web3 lens, deeply disappointed with Facebook trying to domain park a generational opportunity with a centralized solution.
Silvergate, a US-based crypto bank that first partnered with the Facebook venture to create a stable coin last May, said in a release they paid $182 million for the operations infrastructure.
Meta has delved into the world of NFTs and web3 to help creators monetize their assets. They say partnerships with fintechs are essential.
Making news this week is the bankruptcy of a crypto platform, Meta gives up on Novi, Upstart hits some headwinds, startup funding is down, the US Treasury develops a framework for crypto and more