Are crypto and Message worlds on a converging course?

  • By Tom Cleveland

  • January 25, 2019
  • 2:40 am BST

When you consider the major innovations of the past two decades and how they have changed human culture across the globe, the next step in the process is to contemplate what modern-day trends could enable similar results. The Internet and the smartphone have changed how we think, work, and communicate within an extremely short period of time, which leads futurists to believe that the next wave of enabling innovation could very well be cryptocurrencies and the blockchain development efforts that they have spawned. A convergence point may be in the offing or it may have already occurred.

The connecting catalyst could be Short Messaging Service (SMS) technology. It is amazing how quickly simple text messaging morphed into a fully featured way of communicating with one another, whether it be by group chat, longer message support,

image sharing, or seamless integration with other applications. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram are providing these services at lower costs than with traditional methods.

Convenience and lower cost are powerful motivators, which have led to widespread adoption of these features across multi-generational lines. The long-term importance of these trends becomes even more apparent, after considering the recent acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook for $19 billion. Speculation has already begun as to how these two giants will reshape how we live on a daily basis.

Concurrent with this acquisition, Facebook has been diligently building a special internal division devoted to leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology across its 2-billion-plus customer base. Details are being kept under wraps, but the general presumption is that Facebook is contemplating a payment service, driven by the combination of an existing StableCoin or one of its own making with the messaging power of WhatsApp.

It appears that two major enablers of innovation are converging before our very eyes, if Facebook follows this course, but a single crypto startup out of Zug, Switzerland, may have already got a jump on them. The name of the firm is Zulu Republic, “an ecosystem of blockchain tools and platforms where people, businesses, and organizations can thrive”, or so it says on the company’s Twitter account.

The firm’s solution is called “Lite.im”, and it easily interfaces with apps from Facebook Messenger and Telegram, or with traditional SMS, if you wish. It is designed to work in tandem with the company’s native token “ZTX”, but it can also support the major trio, BTC, ETH, and LTC, as well. For security purposes, RSA encryption techniques are used throughout the process. RSA is an algorithm, involving one public and one private “key”, that is used by modern computers to encrypt and decrypt messages.

Per one report: “Furthermore, Lite.im has gone one step further by allowing cryptocurrency purchasing within its platform allowing users to buy, send, receive, and manage their cryptocurrencies without ever having to leave the messaging platform of choice. This service is now up and running.”

 

How soon could we see mass adoption of this type of combined messaging and payment platform? Facebook has released very little in the way of details, product descriptions, or implementation timelines related to its internal crypto development unit. Zulu Republic remains a little known startup with very big ideas for the future. The mind can only guess that Google and Apple and others have major plans of their own to spread the power of blockchain technology into our daily lives in a big way, as well. The next few years will be very interesting.