Jan 26
Diem Reportedly Trying to Sell Assets—Is This the End of Facebook’s Stablecoin Ambitions?
Diem Association (formerly known as Libra Association), the stablecoin project started by Meta (formerly known as Facebook), may soon be known as "abandoned." The association—led by Facebook and a smattering of financial firms, venture capitalists, and aid organizations—is contemplating selling off its intellectual property and other assets "as a way to return capital to its investor members," according to a report by Bloomberg. Any sale, which has not been confirmed by Diem or Facebook, would l...
Nov 30
Novi Crypto Wallet Chief David Marcus Leaving Facebook
David Marcus, the executive who shepherded Facebook's Novi wallet into existence, has announced he will be leaving the social media company at the end of December. Marcus has been with the company seven years, serving as VP of messaging products from 2014 before co-creating the Diem cryptocurrency—which has yet to be released—and taking over Novi in 2018. Current VP of product for Novi, Stephane Kasriel, is being promoted to the top spot. "While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of...
Oct 11
Early Facebook Investor Andreessen Horowitz Nabs Engineers From Novi Crypto Wallet
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a founding member of the organization behind Facebook's Diem cryptocurrency project, is making sure something good comes of an investment that has thus far failed to bear fruit. Two lead engineers for Facebook's Novi wallet, which will be used to hold a dollar-based stablecoin issued by the Diem Association that Facebook created, are moving into senior roles at a16z Crypto, according to a blog post from the firm today. Riyaz Faizullabhoy and Nassim Eddeq...
Aug 18
Facebook's Crypto Wallet Is Ready for the Market, But Is the Market Ready for Novi?
Facebook Diem co-creator David Marcus announced today that Novi, Facebook's long-gestating cryptocurrency wallet, "is ready to come to market." The pronouncement came at the end of a lengthy blog post, rather than the fanfare that accompanied Facebook's initial announcement in June 2019 that it was creating a digital currency backed by a basket of fiat currencies and managed by some of the biggest names in finance and technology. Novi (originally Calibra) finds itself limping into a very differ...
May 12
Facebook's Crypto Ambitions Stumble Forward With Plans for U.S. Stablecoin
Facebook's long-delayed cryptocurrency plans took a modest step forward on Wednesday when the project it is backing, the Diem Association, announced it would launch a U.S. stablecoin. Upon launch, consumers within a select network of companies will be able to use a digital token pegged to the price of a dollar. The plan is a dramatically scaled-back version of what Facebook first touted in the summer of 2019, when the company announced it would launch a global cryptocurrency in partnership with...
Mar 18
Facebook Digital Currency Project Cofounder Departs
Kevin Weil, a Facebook executive and a leader of Diem, the company's digital currency initiative, announced on Thursday he is leaving in order to join a satellite firm. The news appears to be another setback for Facebook's crypto ambitious, which the company unveiled with considerable fanfare in June of 2019 but have since stalled amid regulatory headwinds. Weil, a veteran of Twitter, made his name at Facebook by helping to grow Instagram, and then became one of the co-founders of the digital cu...
Jan 28
Facebook's Diem Testnet Hits 50 Million Transactions
The testnet for Diem, the Facebook-backed stablecoin project, reached over 50 million transactions yesterday, data from blockchain explorer inDiem shows. The development comes a little over a month after Diem was rebranded from the erstwhile “Libra” project. Diem is a stablecoin—a type of cryptocurrency pegged on a 1:1 basis with fiat currencies, the US dollar in this case—aiming to disrupt the traditional payments market with its low-fee, scalable, and fast settlement features. It is run by the...
Dec 8
Facebook Asks for 'Benefit of the Doubt' in Cryptocurrency Ploy
Head of Facebook Financial David Marcus backed the social media giant’s cryptocurrency effort—rebranded from Libra to Diem last week—by asserting that it deserves at least “the benefit of the doubt” from regulators, CNBC reported today. “I don’t think what we are asking for is just immediate trust. I think … what we’re asking for is at least to have the benefit of the doubt,” Marcus said at the Singapore FinTech Festival. “I think all of those things that we’ve done—which has created all kinds o...
Rebrand of Facebook's Libra Association to Diem Hits Snag
It looks like someone at Libra Association forgot to run a Google search before it rebranded to Diem Association. Or, thanks to the backing of Facebook, it could probably afford not to care. A London-based FinTech startup by the name of DIEM is contemplating legal action against Diem Association and/or Facebook over the use of the Diem name, according to reporting from European FinTech publication Sifted. Diem Association, formerly known as Libra Association, is the governance body for the block...
Dec 3
Spotify Is Staffing Up for Facebook’s Diem, Other Crypto Payments
Streaming music giant Spotify is beefing up its payments team in advance of the launch of the Facebook-backed Diem stablecoin project, formerly Libra, along with other potential stablecoin and cryptocurrency-related initiatives on the horizon. Spotify has two Associate Director positions open in its Payments division, one focused on Strategy & Innovation and the other on Strategy & Planning. The innovation-centric role, in particular, mentions the focus on Diem and other crypto initiatives. “Thi...
Dec 1
The Libra Association Rebrands Itself to 'Diem'
The Libra Association, a member organization of Facebook's Libra initiative, announced that it has changed its name to “Diem” and recruited several world-class experts “as it progresses toward regulatory approval for launch,” according to a press release shared with Decrypt today. “Now transitioning to the name ‘Diem’, which denotes a new day for the project, the Diem Association will continue to pursue a mission of building a safe, secure and compliant payment system that empowers people and bu...
Nov 27
Facebook's Libra Finally Gets a Launch Time Frame
Libra, the digital currency project spearheaded by social media giant Facebook, is ready for a launch early next year, as per a report on financial publication FT this morning. However, it’s not going to give Bitcoin a run for its money anytime soon. Three people involved in the project said the launch is a “limited” release, meaning a vastly downgraded version of the original Libra aspirations. Conceived in 2018, Libra was initially supposed to be an internationally-used and accepted coin back...
Nov 25
Libra Hires New General Counsel for Payments Subsidiary
The Libra Association announced today that Saumya Bhavsar, a lawyer with experience at Credit Suisse and UBS, will serve as general counsel for its payments operation, Libra Networks. The Libra Association was established by Facebook in 2019 to oversee the company’s digital currency initiatives, including (but not limited to) the digital currency Libra (LBR). Per the association’s website, it’s an independent financial governance organization based in Switzerland and organized by Facebook. David...
Sep 11
EU Ministers Demand Stablecoin Rules That Could Stifle Libra
The finance ministers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands today called on the European Commission to set strict rules for stablecoins—digital assets meant to reduce price volatility, typically by being backed to a fiat asset. In a joint statement, the finance ministers from the five countries said that stablecoins shouldn’t operate in the European Union (EU) until clear regulations were in place, according to a Reuters report. That could hinder Facebook’s Libra project, whic...
Aug 13
Libra’s Vice Chairman says digital payments could alleviate poverty
“Blockchain-based payment systems can bring more than 1.7 billion people who are unbanked or underbanked into the formal economy,” Dante Disparte, Vice Chairman and Head of Policy and Communications at the Libra Association wrote last week in The Harvard Business Review. Over the past year, the Facebook-backed Libra Association has met a wall of regulatory scrutiny over its cryptocurrency. It recently pivoted its plans and has been tooling up for fresh battles against global regulatory resistan...
Aug 10
Facebook’s F2 will now oversee WhatsApp Pay, crypto wallet Novi
Facebook has a Venmo-like mobile payments service in Facebook Pay, WhatsApp Pay in-app payments, and also an upcoming cryptocurrency wallet in Novi that will work with the Libra cryptocurrency project that it is backing. Sound like a lot of different payment divisions? Facebook apparently agrees, which is why today the company announced that it will bring all of them together in a single group, with new leadership coming onboard to help oversee their ongoing development. David Marcus, head of N...
Jun 16
Unable to launch Libra, Facebook’s WhatsApp Pay goes live in Brazil
Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp announced yesterday that its new WhatsApp Pay feature is live. Users can now send and receive money instantly through the messaging app—but only in Brazil, so far. Despite beta testing the feature in India for years, Brazil is the first country with support for WhatsApp Pay, and Brazilian users will now have the functionality available via an app update. The service is open to those who link their accounts to a debit or credit card from Banco do Brasil (...
Jun 10
Facebook’s Libra appoints Credit Suisse director as compliance chief
Following ample regulatory scrutiny, the Facebook-backed Libra Association recently pivoted its plans to launch its Libra cryptocurrency—and the group’s latest move suggests further action to deal with what could be a tricky regulatory compliance battle ahead. Today, the Libra Association announced the hiring of Sterling Daines as its Chief Compliance Officer, plucking an experienced director from the traditional banking industry. Daines will join Libra later this year after stepping down from h...
Jun 2
Facebook, Twitter and Trump: The terrifying war on truth
Twitter walked headlong into a hail of rubber bullets last week, when it chose to “fact-check” two of President Trump’s tweets. The ensuing furore over censorship and free speech drew in Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who took a contrary stance to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey. Private platforms “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth,” he declared, and promptly drew ire—not just from civil rights campaigners, but from his own employees. President Trump has made Twitter a cornerstone of his communication...
May 26
Facebook’s Libra wallet rebranded to Novi
The Facebook-backed Libra cryptocurrency project is still coming, but Calibra is no more. That’s because today, Facebook announced that it has rebranded its own Libra wallet. The digital wallet will now be known as Novi, which Novi Financial head and Libra co-creator David Marcus tweeted is because “it became clear that there was more confusion than we wanted” between the Libra and Calibra products. Really excited to unveil our new name today! Calibra is now Novi. After announcing @Libra_ last...
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