A nation-state has traditionally been defined by a unifying language, or ethnicity, or geographical boundary, but that’s sooo last millennium. In the future, sovereign states will be defined by a common currency.

Facebook has 2.38 billion monthly active users (and 2.2 billion fake ones). If Facebook were a country, it’d be the most populous country in the world.

Facebook already has the ability to influence elections, provoke regime change, mobilize terrorists, catalyze genocides, and conduct mass surveillance. It’s basically the US government but without the taxes.

No surprise that the company wants to mint a currency called GlobalCoin.

There’s a pernicious myth that when you visit Facebook, you’re paying with your data. Facebook doesn’t traffic in data — they only use it to monopolize your attention. Data isn’t scarce because we can always find new sources.

In the digital world, everything is infinitely replicable and the only scarce resource is attention (And Bitcoin). Rumor has it that Facebook’s GlobalCoin will be pegged to the dollar, but USD is an inferior currency. Peg GlobalCoin to attention, and have user engagement serve as the tax obligation that provides price support to the currency. We pay with our attention.

That was the general idea behind Brave and its Basic Attention Token, except they failed to create a circular economy. Publishers receive tokens for displaying ads, and advertisers submit tokens to place ads, but neither publishers nor advertisers want the tokens so they convert to fiat as soon as they get it.

On the other hand, every single Facebook user wants attention. That’s why we’re on social media sites in the first place, posting content, courting followers, collecting Likes, waiting for validation. We work so hard for attention. That can be the proof-of-work that generates GlobalCoin.

Maybe GlobalCoin can be a transferable version of Klout, where users take their GlobalCoins to merchants, pay for stuff with GlobalCoins, then the merchants use coins to buy ads. As indicated by the name, the goal is ultimately to supplant the US dollar. Capture more engagement, more money, and more attention-value until Facebook takes over the world.