Facebook has met with cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Gemini—the latter of which was founded by the Winklevoss twins—to discuss its plans to create a cryptocurrency. A secretive unit of the social media company has been working over the past year to build a cryptocurrency that would allow users to exchange money within Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as buy things on the internet and in the real world. The twins sued Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 for allegedly stealing their idea for a social network; they ultimately settled for US$65 million. (Financial Times)

Talking point: Gemini was one of the first two companies to win state regulatory approval for a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar last year. Zuckerberg—who is looking to have his cryptocurrency similarly pegged to several currencies including the U.S. dollar—could benefit from the twins’ experience with regulators. Facebook’s reach would be a threat to competing messaging platforms like Kitchener-based Kik, which launched its cryptocurrency Kin in 2017. Facebook’s approach would be different, as Kik is not trying to play nice with regulators. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission must decide by the first week of June whether it will pursue action over Kik’s initial coin offering, which raised US$100 million in 2017.