Several communication apps have already entered the cryptosphere and now Viber is planning to join them. These days, the firm is developing support for a native token and it looks like this new feature will be launched by the app’s parent company, Rakuten Coin.
Viber was launched in 2014 and now reached the impressive number of 1 billion users worldwide. Considering this success, the parent company announced that it is thinking about launching its cryptocurrency, also called Rakuten Coin in 2019. Their intention is based on the loyalty program conducted in February. Surprisingly, Rakuten wants to launch the token via Viber in Russia and now they are studying the Russian laws.
According to Tass, a Russian news agency, Djamel Agaoua, Viber’s Chief Executive Officer declared that very soon people will be able to send and trade Rakuten Coins against rubles, dollars and euros. He added that transfers to bank accounts might also be possible, but it depends on Russian law.
It seems that messaging apps are very fond of tokens and virtual coins
Viber is not the only communication app that is getting into the crypto market. Others have already made this step. Kik Messenger has a little over 300 million users and increased popularity among teenagers. However, in 2017 managed to raise almost $100 million for its token from more than 10,000 ICO investors living in 117 countries.
Telegram was even more successful. Earlier this year, it managed to raise $1.7 billion from a small group of investors just for anticipating an ICO which eventually proved to be unnecessary.
According to some reports released last week, Japan’s most popular chat app, Line, announced that it will soon launch Bitbox, its own cryptocurrency exchange. Although the app has approximately 200 million users worldwide, the new platform will integrate more than 30 popular cryptocurrencies. Also, administrators promise to keep trading fees low and customer support in 15 languages. Under these conditions, the new exchange will become global very soon.
