Diem, the stablecoin of Facebook, now Meta, would be at the end of the line. This was revealed by Bloomberg according to which the Diem Association would be looking to sell its assets to liquidate investors.
Meta abandons the project of the Diem stablecoin
According to reports, confidential and family sources have revealed that Diem Association is considering selling its assets to return capital to its investors. This process would be taking place with the support of some banks.
They are trying to establish how much the intellectual property of what has been done so far is worth, in order to sell it and possibly find a new accommodation for engineers and developers who have created the technology that, apparently, will never see the light, at least not as it was initially designed.
No official confirmation has come from Meta. The Facebook page of the Diem Association has been down for over a year. Even the Twitter account of Diem’s developers has been down since April 2021. In short, everything suggests that the project is stalled.
The troubled path of Diem
The fact that Facebook, now Meta, did not have an easy life launching a stablecoin was clear from the outset. In June 2019, when Mark Zuckerberg had announced the whitepaper of the then Libra, he had raised a fuss, so much so that he was summoned before US Congress. The fear of regulators, particularly in the United States, was that a private entity with 2 billion users, Facebook precisely, could release a currency that could flank official currencies. Too big a risk for the monetary sovereignty that the US jealously defends.
Sensing that the road was all uphill, illustrious members of the Libra Association have abandoned ship, among them PayPal. The result is that the project has been turned upside down, with the hope of finally meeting the favor of the authorities. The name has changed, from Libra to Diem, and the configuration has changed, from stablecoin anchored to a basket of different currencies, to stablecoin anchored to the US dollar. The launch was supposed to take place in 2020, then 2021, then nothing more was heard.
According to Bloomberg’s rumors, perhaps the launch will never happen and if it does, the authorship will no longer belong to Meta.
Novi goes ahead
That something wasn’t going right was also sensed when David Marcus left Novi, the wallet that would have stored Diem. But it seems that Novi is going on its way, as shown by the tests done to allow the transfer of fiat money (not stablecoins) through WhatsApp, the other app owned by Meta.
Everything suggests that Diem has reached the end of the line and that the game between Meta and the regulators has been won by the authorities.
Novi instead could follow a different path and go to transform WhatsApp in a real wallet where to exchange money quickly and instantaneously, just like with messages. All that remains is to wait.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2022/01/27/meta-abandons-diem-indiscretion/