Facebook’s Blockchain Team Is Assembling Its Own Mini-PayPal Mafia

The social media giant has hired several former PayPal employees for its mysterious blockchain project.

Facebook Inc.’s David Marcus — Facebook Inc.’s David Marcus
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

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By Julie Verhage

May 8, 2019 at 11:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

The inner workings of Facebook Inc.’s blockchain team are still shrouded in secrecy, but it’s staffing up, according to people familiar with the group. Those people said that its product, which Bloomberg earlier reported will be a type of cryptocurrency, could be announced as soon as next quarter.

Launched last May, Facebook’s blockchain unit now counts 50 employees. A significant number of those employees—about one in five—used to work at a single company: PayPal Holdings Inc. This quasi-reunion, driven by the group’s leader, former PayPal president David Marcus, is the latest signal of Facebook’s wider ambitions to integrate payments into its platform.