In 2020: Get Ready for Day 0 of the World of Tokenization

While our governments and public sector have often shown resistance to a world which is based on tokens, it is Facebook who are truly likely to properly move us into a tokenization era. So while we love our bits of paper for owning something, love using our credit card to book things, and our fiat currency for buying things, they are from an old world. The new world trades tokens, and exchanges these tokens for services and goods. It is a simple concept, but it is likely to tip our current trading models on their head.

Okay. Let’s create a new bank. “But”, you say, “You don’t have any customers, and it’ll be too costly to get them!”, “Well, let’s say I have the potential to attract 2.7 billion customers, would that work?”, “Yes, of course!”. “But, how would you get trust?”, “Well, I issue receipts for IOUs that you bank will pay, in whichever bank and/or currency that you want!”. “But, how can I trust that they will pay it?”, “I will put the money away somewhere, so you can get it back, but you can also transfer the IOU to someone else, if you want”, “Okay. Isn’t that just what we do just now with money?”, “Yes!”.

And so it is Facebook that is looking to use its captive base of 2.7 billion users — on Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram — to launch its own cryptocurrency and become the Central Bank of Facebook. If…