Two years after Diem’s announcement, Facebook is now considering abandoning its cryptocurrency project.
Already two years since Facebook announced Libra, its in-house cryptocurrency project. Later becoming Diem, the non-fiduciary currency dreamed up by Mark Zuckerberg is still not relevant, and the Meta group would even consider nipping it in the bud. At least that’s what this article published earlier this week reveals. Bloomberg. The newspaper cites sources familiar with the matter, and specifies that the Diem association is currently considering sell all of its assetswith the aim of reimbursing investors, and selling its intellectual property rights.
Diem takes on water
Initially thought of as a stablecoin (cryptocurrency based on an existing currency), Diem should have been pegged to the US dollar. Last May, Facebook notably announced a collaboration with the bank Silvergate, with a view to officially issuing the currency. The association did not finally obtain the approval of the American authorities, prohibiting the issuance of Diem until further notice. If the information remains to be taken with a grain of salt — an official representative has already pointed out a few “factual errors” in the investigation of Bloomberg, it could make investors lose big. Remember that in addition to Facebook / Meta, several large companies had placed their trust in the project, such as Iliad, Lyft, Shopify, Spotify, or even Uber. PayPal, for its part, preferred to break its commitments with the project to focus on its own crypto.
Deprived of Diem, however, Facebook does not seem ready to give up crypto. The company has already launched its own virtual wallet with Novi, which uses another stablecoin called USPD, also pegged to the US dollar. It remains to be seen whether the use of a third-party currency is only temporary for Meta, or if the project is indeed about to be abandoned.
