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2021-07-07

Let go to moon

Facebook: $1 Trillion Is Just The Beginning

Summary Facebook is now worth over $1 trillion, but growth on its platforms is slowing down. The co

Facebook: $1 Trillion Is Just The Beginning

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{"i18n":{"language":"en_US"},"data":{"magic":2,"id":140830282,"tweetId":"140830282","gmtCreate":1625644836646,"gmtModify":1703745524510,"author":{"id":3585884275759342,"authorId":3585884275759342,"authorIdStr":"3585884275759342","name":"WenHui2205","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":6,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Let go to moon</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Let go to moon</body></html>","text":"Let go to moon","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/140830282","repostId":1153955441,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1153955441","pubTimestamp":1625565885,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1153955441?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-07-06 18:04","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Facebook: $1 Trillion Is Just The Beginning","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1153955441","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nFacebook is now worth over $1 trillion, but growth on its platforms is slowing down.\nThe co","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>Facebook is now worth over $1 trillion, but growth on its platforms is slowing down.</li>\n <li>The company must look elsewhere to find growth and find the next $1 trillion.</li>\n <li>I discuss Facebook's three-step plan to achieve worldwide payment dominance by leveraging its most valuable asset: attention.</li>\n</ul>\nFacebook, Inc. (FB) recently passed a very significant milestone, achieving a +$1 Trillion valuation. The company has, unarguably, become the most successful advertising business in the world. But what comes now? The online advertising market has become saturated, especially in developed economies like the U.S. The number of new Facebook users is forecast to grow at itsslowest rate ever in 2021, under 1%. If Facebook wants to keep growing, it must look elsewhere.\nWhere will the next $1 trillion come from?\nIn this article, I lay out what I have identified to be Facebook’s three-point strategy to capture the payment industry in one fell swoop. Facebook is working on all levels to become a key player in the business of money. The company is potentially laying the groundwork to become the first corporately run “Central World Bank.”\nStep 1: One foot through the door\nFacebook is more than a social media platform, everyone knows that. The company has become way too big and consequential to be analyzed as a mere seller of advertising, though this is where most of its revenues come from. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are communication tools that add countless value to our economies, and using them to sell advertising is genius, but it barely scrapes the surface of what a company with so much reach can achieve.\nThe first step in Facebook’s plan is establishing itself as a cheap and convenient system to make peer-to-peer transactions. You already have the Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp app on your phone. These apps already connect you with most of the people you know, so why not use these apps to send money? Facebook has already achieved the hardest part of the customer acquisition journey, getting your “trust” and their app on your phone. All that is missing is some banking/credit card information.\nSo simple, and yet so complex. If it’s so easy for Facebook to pull this lever, why hasn’t it done so successfully already?\nOne reason is strategy, but perhaps the biggest hurdle is regulation. Recently, Facebook made headlines when it announced that it was relaunching WhatsApp Pay in Brazil. You read that right, Brazil’s Central Banks stepped in last year tosuspend WhatsApp Payunder the guise of an “investigation” over potential threats it might pose to the nation's payments systems. Almost one year later, the company has managed torelaunch WhatsApp Pay, and this isn’t being talked about enough. Brazil has over108 million peopleusing WhatsApp, behind India with 390 million and ahead of the US with 75 million.\nIndia was the first place that WhatsApp Pay was launched, and we do have some data on the situation there.\nWhatsApp Paylaunched in India around December 2020. In its first operational month, WhatsApp Pay processed around $1.8 million in transactions. In February 2021, WhatsApp Pay was responsible for around $4.2 million in transactions. This is remarkable growth, but perhaps still slower adoption than some would expect.\nOnce again, Facebook is being hampered by regulations. Just as WhatsApp Pay launched, the NPCI announced that “third-party applications offering UPI payments service can process a maximum of 30 percent of the transaction volumes starting January 1, 2021”. This means there is a cap on how many transactions WhatsApp Pay can process, and maybe one of the reasons why there was no marketing push associated with the WhatsApp Pay launch.\nHowever, it seems like the lack of adoption of WhatsApp Pay and other P2P networks may stem from a more fundamental problem. This was aptly explained by Arnav Gupta, an analyst at Forrester Research\n<blockquote>\n The reason is very clear. It is the lack of use cases. Right now, WhatsApp is offering peer-to-peer (P2P) payments. There is no geography where just on the back of P2P payments, digital payments have proliferated. They don’t have those P2M transactions or use cases defined well,” Arnav Gupta, an analyst at Forrester Research told Financial Express Online.\n</blockquote>\nSource:Financialexpress.com\nAs Gupta points out, the problem is that Facebook is not yet offering a compelling system for Peer-to-Merchant transactions. But this is exactly what Facebook is working on right now.\nStep 2: Facebook is there for you\nIt’s such a shame. Facebook had a lot of potential with this whole WhatsApp Pay thing. But without the ability to connect consumers with merchants and businesses it doesn’t seem like there’s much point to it. If only Facebook had a platform where these two groups of people get together to connect, discover each other’s needs, and even transact. Oh, wait a minute…\nAllowing peer-to-peer transactions is nice and all, but here is where Facebook stands to make the big bucks and it is where the company is now turning its attention. The first step was to get into people’s pockets, the next one is to normalize using Facebook/Instagram as a shopping platform, which could give Facebook the potential of being the default payment processor for most of the eCommerce transactions in the world. This requires two steps; turning Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp into an actual eCommerce/Marketplace and then enabling payments.\nThis agenda has been in play for some time. Instagram began implementing eCommerce style initiatives as far back as 2018. In the last month though, we have seen at least two huge moves pushing this reality even further. On July 1st, Facebook announced“drastic changes” to Instagram. These include the use of longer format videos and also showing content that users don’t follow. The company went as far as to say that they no longer view Instagram as a photo-sharing app. But if Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app, what is it? I would argue Facebook is trying to turn this platform into a fully-fledged Marketplace.\nWhy wouldn’t it? Social media is perhaps the number one tool for eCommerce businesses. There are over 1 billion people on Instagram, and71% of businessesclaim they use Instagram for marketing purposes. With over $18.1 billion in ad revenues last year. It is clear that Instagram, and to a lesser extent Facebook, is the best place to generate traffic online, which is all that matters these days. Therefore, it’s only natural for businesses to move their whole shopping experience into Instagram. One of the most important principles of eCommerce is leading the user to the checkout with as few clicks as possible, so there is a clear incentive for online sellers to do this.\nInstagram Shops has been around since 2017, however, Instagram checkout and Facebook Pay came out in 2019, and it is still being rolled out in other countries. Facebook has also enabled the Shop feature to be useddirectly on WhatsApp, bringing businesses and consumers one step closer.\nSo far, Instagram checkout is powered by PayPal (PYPL), and I don’t believe Facebook adds any kind of transaction fee, which seems like the smart thing to do. For now, the most important thing is to move the shopping experience to their social media platforms, and once the company holds all the power, it can choose the best way of monetizing it.\nThe key fact to understand here is that controlling the traffic, which Facebook does, is the most important part of the equation in today’s market. This is something I touched on in a Shopify Inc. (SHOP) vs.Amazon.com(AMZN) article, where I talked about Ben Thompson's \"Aggregation Theory.\"\n<blockquote>\n This theory sustains that, due to the changes that the digital age has brought about, the power lies in those companies that control demand for abundant resources, rather than companies that control the distribution of scarce ones. Amazon is an aggregator and possesses the qualities that are associated with these entities:\n</blockquote>\nYou can switch Amazon for Facebook and reach the same conclusion. Facebook controls the real scarce resource, which is traffic. Moving the shopping experience to their social media platforms will put Facebook at the centre of worldwide commerce.\nStep 3: One world, One currency\nThe internet has brought around a shopping experience without borders, so it only makes sense that this borderless online economy will run on one international currency through the power of technology. This is where Diem comes in.\nIn its latest iteration, Diem will be a stablecoin linked to the dollar. Facebook has now moved its Diem operations back to the US and enlisted the help of Silvergate Bank. Originally, Diem was going to be a stablecoin made up of a basket of currencies, much like the IMF’s special drawing rights, but this idea has been scrapped for now.\nDiem will limit itself to acting as a dollar stablecoin, but, in practice, that is equivalent to pegging your coin to the currency of the world. The company has had to make plenty of concessions since it originally tried to launch “Libra”, but it looks like it is finally gaining some traction.\nArguably, Diem does not offer anything new in terms of innovation. We have dollars, we have cryptocurrencies, and we even have stablecoins that are pegged to the dollar. So why is this special? Because Facebook is bridging the gap between cryptocurrencies and the real world. Most governments are afraid of cryptocurrencies, and perhaps they should be, but this is not a good reason not to benefit from everything blockchain technology has to offer.\nThrough Diem, Facebook is giving regulators in the US and the West a door into the cryptocurrency space, perhaps even a way to “fight” cryptocurrencies. As it stands now, it looks like Diem will be the only Western weapon to fight the rise of the Digital Yuan, and Facebook will be at the heart of this fight.\nUltimately, a world economy needs a world currency. Diem is this tool and its implementation fits perfectly into Facebook’s plan of becoming the world’s leading payment processor, and even bank. In fact, by controlling Diem, we could argue that Facebook will become the first corporately run central bank.\nMarket Opportunity\nI started this article by talking about how Facebook is looking for the next trillion-dollar opportunity. While it is hard to quantify exactly how much Facebook stands to gain from these new businesses, and how the market will value the “new “ Facebook, we can make an estimate of the size of the different markets that the company is tackling. In reality, all of these moves are coming together, so the lines are a bit blurred, but let’s identify the size of the “markets” we have mentioned above specifically.\nStarting with P2P transactions, this market is projected to grow at a 29% CAGR through 2027,reaching a size of $558.91 billion. Of course, the biggest opportunities for Facebook are developing markets, such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia. These are places with very large populations and which are expected to outpace global GDP growth, so they are key areas for Facebook’s growth plans.\nIn Brazil, the “mobile wallet and payment” market is projected to reach just under$152 billion by 2025.In India, the digital payment industry is set to increase three-fold toRs 7,092 trillion by 2025.\nBasically, through WhatsApp Pay, Facebook is looking to become the “Venmo” and “Cash App” of these developed economies. To get a sense of the potential here, Cash App took in over$5.9 billion in revenues last year.\nMoving on to eCommerce, Facebook is now looking to move part of this shopping experience directly into their platforms/Apps. Global eCommerce sales totalled $4.29 trillion in 2020, so it wouldn’t take much for Facebook to increase its revenues significantly if it can entrench itself as a payment option. Ultimately, Facebook would be looking to bring out something similar to Shopify’s Shop Pay. This is a payment processor that Shopify offers its merchants and from which it takes a nice transaction fee. The funny thing is that Shopify Pay is actually powered by Stripe, but that doesn’t stop Shopify from taking a nice cut.\nInterestingly, Shop Pay is alreadyavailable on Facebook and Instagramas a payment option as of this February. Facebook is actively collaborating with Shopify in this space, though it is still not clear how the company will make money from this.\nAn interesting concept Facebook could pursue though is to follow Starbucks Corporation's (SBUX), \"inadvertent bank\" model. Starbucks offers its customers the option of loading money onto the Starbucks App. Customers are incentivized to do this through free products and special discounts. The great thing about this isn’t the increased customer loyalty, it’s all the money that is left lying around in these cards, which the company can use or even reinvest. In 2020 the company had around $1.4 billion of funds deposited in these cards, and by some measures, it achieved a10% return on these funds.Just imagine how much money Facebook could end up storing for users if their payment system became mainstream.\nBut to make matters better, Facebook might be looking to become an actual bank. This looks to be the plan with Diem. If Diem launched one day, it would have all the appeal of a cryptocurrency, and the stability of a regular fiat coin. The implications for Americans, who get paid in dollars, may not seem huge, but to people in smaller nations, being able to transact and store Diem will be a game-changer.\nIn 2020, it was calculated that the global banking system was about$2.5 trillion in size. This is Facebook's target. Also, we can add to this around2 billion peoplewho are currently unbanked, which something like Diem could tackle too.\nTakeaway\nFacebook is perhaps the most influential company of the 21st century. It seems kind of bizarre to think this when the company “merely” makes money by serving ads, but it holds one of the scarcest resources of our time; attention. With this, Facebook can do become a payment processor and even a world bank, by introducing the first-ever fully international and borderless currency.\nThere is a common denominator with Facebook’s actions. Because of its size, the company always faces opposition. We have seen this with WhatsApp Pay, just like we also saw it with Diem, formerly known as Libra. But Facebook always adjusts and comes back to get consumers, businesses, and regulators on board.\nUltimately, Facebook can leverage its audience in so many ways. Diem might be the most important part of this puzzle. With world governments behind this idea, the rest of the pieces would fall into place. Being a payment processing company becomes almost irrelevant, once you become the company that “controls” the means of payment.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Facebook: $1 Trillion Is Just The Beginning</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nFacebook: $1 Trillion Is Just The Beginning\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-07-06 18:04 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437918-facebook-stock-1-trillion-marketcap-just-the-beginning>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nFacebook is now worth over $1 trillion, but growth on its platforms is slowing down.\nThe company must look elsewhere to find growth and find the next $1 trillion.\nI discuss Facebook's three-...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437918-facebook-stock-1-trillion-marketcap-just-the-beginning\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437918-facebook-stock-1-trillion-marketcap-just-the-beginning","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1153955441","content_text":"Summary\n\nFacebook is now worth over $1 trillion, but growth on its platforms is slowing down.\nThe company must look elsewhere to find growth and find the next $1 trillion.\nI discuss Facebook's three-step plan to achieve worldwide payment dominance by leveraging its most valuable asset: attention.\n\nFacebook, Inc. (FB) recently passed a very significant milestone, achieving a +$1 Trillion valuation. The company has, unarguably, become the most successful advertising business in the world. But what comes now? The online advertising market has become saturated, especially in developed economies like the U.S. The number of new Facebook users is forecast to grow at itsslowest rate ever in 2021, under 1%. If Facebook wants to keep growing, it must look elsewhere.\nWhere will the next $1 trillion come from?\nIn this article, I lay out what I have identified to be Facebook’s three-point strategy to capture the payment industry in one fell swoop. Facebook is working on all levels to become a key player in the business of money. The company is potentially laying the groundwork to become the first corporately run “Central World Bank.”\nStep 1: One foot through the door\nFacebook is more than a social media platform, everyone knows that. The company has become way too big and consequential to be analyzed as a mere seller of advertising, though this is where most of its revenues come from. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are communication tools that add countless value to our economies, and using them to sell advertising is genius, but it barely scrapes the surface of what a company with so much reach can achieve.\nThe first step in Facebook’s plan is establishing itself as a cheap and convenient system to make peer-to-peer transactions. You already have the Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp app on your phone. These apps already connect you with most of the people you know, so why not use these apps to send money? Facebook has already achieved the hardest part of the customer acquisition journey, getting your “trust” and their app on your phone. All that is missing is some banking/credit card information.\nSo simple, and yet so complex. If it’s so easy for Facebook to pull this lever, why hasn’t it done so successfully already?\nOne reason is strategy, but perhaps the biggest hurdle is regulation. Recently, Facebook made headlines when it announced that it was relaunching WhatsApp Pay in Brazil. You read that right, Brazil’s Central Banks stepped in last year tosuspend WhatsApp Payunder the guise of an “investigation” over potential threats it might pose to the nation's payments systems. Almost one year later, the company has managed torelaunch WhatsApp Pay, and this isn’t being talked about enough. Brazil has over108 million peopleusing WhatsApp, behind India with 390 million and ahead of the US with 75 million.\nIndia was the first place that WhatsApp Pay was launched, and we do have some data on the situation there.\nWhatsApp Paylaunched in India around December 2020. In its first operational month, WhatsApp Pay processed around $1.8 million in transactions. In February 2021, WhatsApp Pay was responsible for around $4.2 million in transactions. This is remarkable growth, but perhaps still slower adoption than some would expect.\nOnce again, Facebook is being hampered by regulations. Just as WhatsApp Pay launched, the NPCI announced that “third-party applications offering UPI payments service can process a maximum of 30 percent of the transaction volumes starting January 1, 2021”. This means there is a cap on how many transactions WhatsApp Pay can process, and maybe one of the reasons why there was no marketing push associated with the WhatsApp Pay launch.\nHowever, it seems like the lack of adoption of WhatsApp Pay and other P2P networks may stem from a more fundamental problem. This was aptly explained by Arnav Gupta, an analyst at Forrester Research\n\n The reason is very clear. It is the lack of use cases. Right now, WhatsApp is offering peer-to-peer (P2P) payments. There is no geography where just on the back of P2P payments, digital payments have proliferated. They don’t have those P2M transactions or use cases defined well,” Arnav Gupta, an analyst at Forrester Research told Financial Express Online.\n\nSource:Financialexpress.com\nAs Gupta points out, the problem is that Facebook is not yet offering a compelling system for Peer-to-Merchant transactions. But this is exactly what Facebook is working on right now.\nStep 2: Facebook is there for you\nIt’s such a shame. Facebook had a lot of potential with this whole WhatsApp Pay thing. But without the ability to connect consumers with merchants and businesses it doesn’t seem like there’s much point to it. If only Facebook had a platform where these two groups of people get together to connect, discover each other’s needs, and even transact. Oh, wait a minute…\nAllowing peer-to-peer transactions is nice and all, but here is where Facebook stands to make the big bucks and it is where the company is now turning its attention. The first step was to get into people’s pockets, the next one is to normalize using Facebook/Instagram as a shopping platform, which could give Facebook the potential of being the default payment processor for most of the eCommerce transactions in the world. This requires two steps; turning Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp into an actual eCommerce/Marketplace and then enabling payments.\nThis agenda has been in play for some time. Instagram began implementing eCommerce style initiatives as far back as 2018. In the last month though, we have seen at least two huge moves pushing this reality even further. On July 1st, Facebook announced“drastic changes” to Instagram. These include the use of longer format videos and also showing content that users don’t follow. The company went as far as to say that they no longer view Instagram as a photo-sharing app. But if Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app, what is it? I would argue Facebook is trying to turn this platform into a fully-fledged Marketplace.\nWhy wouldn’t it? Social media is perhaps the number one tool for eCommerce businesses. There are over 1 billion people on Instagram, and71% of businessesclaim they use Instagram for marketing purposes. With over $18.1 billion in ad revenues last year. It is clear that Instagram, and to a lesser extent Facebook, is the best place to generate traffic online, which is all that matters these days. Therefore, it’s only natural for businesses to move their whole shopping experience into Instagram. One of the most important principles of eCommerce is leading the user to the checkout with as few clicks as possible, so there is a clear incentive for online sellers to do this.\nInstagram Shops has been around since 2017, however, Instagram checkout and Facebook Pay came out in 2019, and it is still being rolled out in other countries. Facebook has also enabled the Shop feature to be useddirectly on WhatsApp, bringing businesses and consumers one step closer.\nSo far, Instagram checkout is powered by PayPal (PYPL), and I don’t believe Facebook adds any kind of transaction fee, which seems like the smart thing to do. For now, the most important thing is to move the shopping experience to their social media platforms, and once the company holds all the power, it can choose the best way of monetizing it.\nThe key fact to understand here is that controlling the traffic, which Facebook does, is the most important part of the equation in today’s market. This is something I touched on in a Shopify Inc. (SHOP) vs.Amazon.com(AMZN) article, where I talked about Ben Thompson's \"Aggregation Theory.\"\n\n This theory sustains that, due to the changes that the digital age has brought about, the power lies in those companies that control demand for abundant resources, rather than companies that control the distribution of scarce ones. Amazon is an aggregator and possesses the qualities that are associated with these entities:\n\nYou can switch Amazon for Facebook and reach the same conclusion. Facebook controls the real scarce resource, which is traffic. Moving the shopping experience to their social media platforms will put Facebook at the centre of worldwide commerce.\nStep 3: One world, One currency\nThe internet has brought around a shopping experience without borders, so it only makes sense that this borderless online economy will run on one international currency through the power of technology. This is where Diem comes in.\nIn its latest iteration, Diem will be a stablecoin linked to the dollar. Facebook has now moved its Diem operations back to the US and enlisted the help of Silvergate Bank. Originally, Diem was going to be a stablecoin made up of a basket of currencies, much like the IMF’s special drawing rights, but this idea has been scrapped for now.\nDiem will limit itself to acting as a dollar stablecoin, but, in practice, that is equivalent to pegging your coin to the currency of the world. The company has had to make plenty of concessions since it originally tried to launch “Libra”, but it looks like it is finally gaining some traction.\nArguably, Diem does not offer anything new in terms of innovation. We have dollars, we have cryptocurrencies, and we even have stablecoins that are pegged to the dollar. So why is this special? Because Facebook is bridging the gap between cryptocurrencies and the real world. Most governments are afraid of cryptocurrencies, and perhaps they should be, but this is not a good reason not to benefit from everything blockchain technology has to offer.\nThrough Diem, Facebook is giving regulators in the US and the West a door into the cryptocurrency space, perhaps even a way to “fight” cryptocurrencies. As it stands now, it looks like Diem will be the only Western weapon to fight the rise of the Digital Yuan, and Facebook will be at the heart of this fight.\nUltimately, a world economy needs a world currency. Diem is this tool and its implementation fits perfectly into Facebook’s plan of becoming the world’s leading payment processor, and even bank. In fact, by controlling Diem, we could argue that Facebook will become the first corporately run central bank.\nMarket Opportunity\nI started this article by talking about how Facebook is looking for the next trillion-dollar opportunity. While it is hard to quantify exactly how much Facebook stands to gain from these new businesses, and how the market will value the “new “ Facebook, we can make an estimate of the size of the different markets that the company is tackling. In reality, all of these moves are coming together, so the lines are a bit blurred, but let’s identify the size of the “markets” we have mentioned above specifically.\nStarting with P2P transactions, this market is projected to grow at a 29% CAGR through 2027,reaching a size of $558.91 billion. Of course, the biggest opportunities for Facebook are developing markets, such as Brazil, India, and Indonesia. These are places with very large populations and which are expected to outpace global GDP growth, so they are key areas for Facebook’s growth plans.\nIn Brazil, the “mobile wallet and payment” market is projected to reach just under$152 billion by 2025.In India, the digital payment industry is set to increase three-fold toRs 7,092 trillion by 2025.\nBasically, through WhatsApp Pay, Facebook is looking to become the “Venmo” and “Cash App” of these developed economies. To get a sense of the potential here, Cash App took in over$5.9 billion in revenues last year.\nMoving on to eCommerce, Facebook is now looking to move part of this shopping experience directly into their platforms/Apps. Global eCommerce sales totalled $4.29 trillion in 2020, so it wouldn’t take much for Facebook to increase its revenues significantly if it can entrench itself as a payment option. Ultimately, Facebook would be looking to bring out something similar to Shopify’s Shop Pay. This is a payment processor that Shopify offers its merchants and from which it takes a nice transaction fee. The funny thing is that Shopify Pay is actually powered by Stripe, but that doesn’t stop Shopify from taking a nice cut.\nInterestingly, Shop Pay is alreadyavailable on Facebook and Instagramas a payment option as of this February. Facebook is actively collaborating with Shopify in this space, though it is still not clear how the company will make money from this.\nAn interesting concept Facebook could pursue though is to follow Starbucks Corporation's (SBUX), \"inadvertent bank\" model. Starbucks offers its customers the option of loading money onto the Starbucks App. Customers are incentivized to do this through free products and special discounts. The great thing about this isn’t the increased customer loyalty, it’s all the money that is left lying around in these cards, which the company can use or even reinvest. In 2020 the company had around $1.4 billion of funds deposited in these cards, and by some measures, it achieved a10% return on these funds.Just imagine how much money Facebook could end up storing for users if their payment system became mainstream.\nBut to make matters better, Facebook might be looking to become an actual bank. This looks to be the plan with Diem. If Diem launched one day, it would have all the appeal of a cryptocurrency, and the stability of a regular fiat coin. The implications for Americans, who get paid in dollars, may not seem huge, but to people in smaller nations, being able to transact and store Diem will be a game-changer.\nIn 2020, it was calculated that the global banking system was about$2.5 trillion in size. This is Facebook's target. Also, we can add to this around2 billion peoplewho are currently unbanked, which something like Diem could tackle too.\nTakeaway\nFacebook is perhaps the most influential company of the 21st century. It seems kind of bizarre to think this when the company “merely” makes money by serving ads, but it holds one of the scarcest resources of our time; attention. With this, Facebook can do become a payment processor and even a world bank, by introducing the first-ever fully international and borderless currency.\nThere is a common denominator with Facebook’s actions. Because of its size, the company always faces opposition. We have seen this with WhatsApp Pay, just like we also saw it with Diem, formerly known as Libra. But Facebook always adjusts and comes back to get consumers, businesses, and regulators on board.\nUltimately, Facebook can leverage its audience in so many ways. Diem might be the most important part of this puzzle. With world governments behind this idea, the rest of the pieces would fall into place. 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