The idea that a company as powerful and autocratic as Facebook would ever dive into crypto currencies has always seemed a bit like the Death Star deciding to throw a staff Christmas party.

Whether it's the bitcoin model itself (Wild West capitalism where nobody's in charge) or the more corporate-friendly efforts to exploit the blockchain approach (distributed databases across networks within a business or industry) it's been hard to see how a billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg might find a use for it.