Belief in this statement requires a degree of trust in facebook.
Jokes apart, Facebook says it is only one of the 100 participants in the network without any special privileges or accesses. While this is technically true, Facebook can maintain a decent amount of influence on the consortium with its technical know-how and leadership in making updates over the network.
The first sentence of the article is also pretty funny: "Facebook stressed it will not control the new digital currency and users don’t need to trust Facebook in order to use it"
It's like Boeing saying: Boeing doesn't fly your plane, your pilot does, so you don't have to trust Boeing in order to fly on Boeing airplanes.
Jokes apart, Facebook says it is only one of the 100 participants in the network without any special privileges or accesses. While this is technically true, Facebook can maintain a decent amount of influence on the consortium with its technical know-how and leadership in making updates over the network.