VKontakte Considers Launching Cryptocurrency

VKontakte Considers Launching its Social Cryptocurrency

Apparently, the upper executive management of the most influential social media platforms in the world had been blind towards crypto and the blockchain technology up until Pavel Durov, a highly successful Russian digital entrepreneur, masterminded the hugely prospective ICO of the Telegram Open Network, a blockchain project that centers around a hugely popular instant messenger.

After that, the news concerning the intention of huge social media platform to launch or otherwise use cryptocurrencies started mushrooming up with the likes of Facebook and Twitter trying to jump on the bandwagon.

It was only a matter of time until VKontakte, a Russian social media service that has dominating popularity in the post-Soviet countries, displayed some signs of interest towards the incorporation of digital currency in their line of services.         

A coin for half a billion users

Since its inception in 2006, VKontakte has grown from a startup established by the three aspiring Russian entrepreneurs into a massively influential social media platform that poses serious competition to Facebook within the global community of Russian-speaking users.

By the way, Pavel Durov was one of the founders and the spokesperson of VKontakte until he was ousted from the company for getting involved in a feud with the Federal Security Service of Russia. After that, the ownership rights for the VKontakte (VK) brand was transferred to the Mail.Ru Group, the largest Internet corporation in Russia. 

The hype surrounding VK began with the information leakage from an insider source, who presumably holds high office at the company, which stated that the management of VKontakte is considering the possibility of developing the platform’s own cryptocurrency.

The informer even managed to sneak out the presentation which provided an insight into the general concept of the anticipated cryptocurrency. According to this document, the VK tokens will be credited to users’ accounts for the time spent online. The size of the reward will depend on the overall duration of online sessions as well as on the activity displayed on the platform.

The content creators also have a chance of getting extra coins through donations made by their followers. There might be some provisions for rewarding users for commenting and sharing the interesting content.

The acquired VK coins could be spent on purchasing the intra-platform services, transferred to fellow users or exchanged to other currencies via VK Pay service.  

As expected, the VKontakte officials avoided commenting on any inquiries with regard to the rumored cryptocurrency incorporation.

The official launch of an April Fools’ joke?

A few days ago, the VK Coin application has appeared in the corresponding section of the VK website. It is a mobile app which can be downloaded by scanning the QR code. Once the app is downloaded, the user can begin mining VK Coins using the computation capacities of his smartphone. The obtained token can then be transferred to friends or donated to the favorite VK online communities.

However, judging from the fact that there hasn’t been any official announcement of the launch and that the app was created by the small-time band of coders who call themselves Happy Santa, this ‘launch’ might as well be a hoax.

Author: Alex Paulson. Article for: Crypto-Rating.com