Firstly, it's pretty common for companies to ‘investigate’ various new technologies, sometimes seemingly at random, just to see what they can “imagine to get ou

Firstly, it's pretty common for companies to ‘investigate’ various new technologies, sometimes seemingly at random, just to see what they can “imagine to get out of” the new technology... think of it as some kind of “basic research” kind of thing (like Microsoft investigating the Halting Problem and publishing their Terminator algorithm).[0] The obvious answer to your question is that they're looking into using it for the sake of expanding their online payment system. Sending money between users with Messenger is something I've read of (but haven't ever come across, maybe because here where I live (IT/EU) it mightn't be enabled). The slightly more disturbing answer is that they've latched-on to some of the arm-waving about blockchain technology being the future of distributed computing (or something like that), specifically an enabler for storing one's social data in a distributed environment and therefore prospecting the idea of social graphs being distributed onto blockchain thus obsoleting their current business model, and have therefore decided to investigate this technology, see if they can somehow insinuate themselves into the role as a centralising force, and/or have decided to develop it so they can patent it and use that patent defensively to protect their current business model. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Terminator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Terminator