Meta (formerly Facebook) is reportedly looking to sell the Diem cryptocurrency project along with all its associated assets.
Diem To Be Sold?
Mark Zuckerberg had high hopes for his cryptocurrency project. In fact, he even defended it in front of Congress. However, after a rebranding and much delay and roadblocks, it looks like Zuckerberg will finally have to put his crypto ambitions to rest. Apparently, the Diem Association is currently considering a sale of assets to accumulate enough capital to reimburse investors. Investment bankers are being consulted to figure out how to package and sell its intellectual property. The association is also looking into finding positions for the engineers involved in developing the technology. However, nothing has been publicly announced, and discussions are still quite hush-hush.
Meta owns about one-third of the Diem project, while the rest is owned by members of the Diem Association that include VC firms and tech companies. Some of these partner companies are Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, and Temasek Holdings.
History Of The Diem Project
The Diem Association was first known as Libra and was unveiled in 2019 by Facebook as a platform to launch its own stablecoins. Despite having support from other companies and brands, global regulatory scrutiny proved to be a major obstacle for the initiative. After Zuckerberg’s Congress testimony, several partners jumped ship and the project was rebranded as Diem. The project continued to suffer and had to scale back on several goals. Another major blow was the loss of founder David Marcus, who resigned from Meta last year. When finally it seemed that Diem stablecoins would start being issued at the end of last year, the final nail on the coffin came in the form of resistance from the US Federal Reserve. The stablecoins were to be issued by Meta’s partner company Silvergate. However, the uncertainty and delay in green lighting the project from the Fed officials led to Silvergate being unable to issue the asset.
Lackluster Report From Novi
Another one of Meta’s crypto initiatives was the Novi wallet. Initially conceptualized as a digital wallet for the stablecoin project, the pilot project was only launched in the US and Guatemala. Lawmakers, especially US Democrats believed that both the Novi wallet and the Diem project would give Meta undue influence and can negatively affect the national economy. Therefore they demanded the discontinuation of both projects.
