David Marcus Announced He’s Leaving Meta’s Diem Project. But was there even going to be a Diem if he chose to stay?  Covered: David Marcus Resigns Major Diem Turnover Major Shift For Meta David Marcus Resigns David Marcus, the head of the crypto division at Meta, formerly called Facebook, has resigned. What happened and what […] The post Meta’s Head of Botched Crypto Project Resigns: What Happened appeared first on CryptosRus.

Meta’s Head of Botched Crypto Project Resigns: What Happened

David Marcus Announced He’s Leaving Meta’s Diem Project. But was there even going to be a Diem if he chose to stay? 

Covered:

  • David Marcus Resigns
  • Major Diem Turnover
  • Major Shift For Meta

David Marcus Resigns

David Marcus, the head of the crypto division at Meta, formerly called Facebook, has resigned. What happened and what does this mean for their flailing crypto project, Diem, and their metaverse plans?

Marcus has been the man behind Meta’s oft-ridiculed crypto project called Diem, launched in 2019, which in its current form is a wallet called Novi and the Diem stablecoin.

Marcus has overseen the botched project from its inception, which has gone through various name changes and repeated failures to launch. The project has also come under regulatory scrutiny and lost many of its members of the ‘Diem Association.’

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The Novi wallet is in beta testing and apparently has jettisoned their own stablecoin project and opted to use Paxos (USDP) for the wallet instead. On Oct 20th, Coinbase partnered with Meta to become the custodian for Novi.

Meta Facebook Turnover

Apparently, that wasn’t enough for Zuck. With the project still yet to launch, and the goalposts constantly shifting, Meta and Marcus have decided to part ways. Notably, in a Facebook post announcing the resignation, Zuckerberg commented on the post and spoke of the Diem project in the past tense, saying:

“We wouldn’t have taken such a big swing at Diem without your leadership.”

Marcus is just the latest executive to resign who was working on Diem. Fellow project founder Morgan Beller left in September of 2020, and Kevin Weil, another founder, left in March of this year.

And it wasn’t just employees that left Diem. In October, “Mastercard and Visa, payments processors Stripe and Mercado Pago, and eBay” all departed the project. It wouldn’t be surprising if Meta itself decides to leave Diem soon, and throw it out of their metaverse.

Major Shift For Meta

Facebook’s rebrand to Meta and the resignation of Marcus and other executives point to a major shift in the company. Zuckerberg appears to be focused solely on the metaverse, and Diem is certainly now in its death throws.

In hindsight, it was doomed from the start. The irony of a global behemoth like Facebook coming into crypto and blockchain trying to take over global payments soured everyone from the average pleb to powerful lawmakers.

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Meta wanting to exert control in the financial system was a bridge too far, considering their egregious misuse of consumer data on Facebook. It was a far fall from grace; at one point many in crypto saw Diem as a serious contender in terms of the payments use case, simply because of their sheer ability to gin up capital and resources.

On the other hand, though, being that their blockchain was permissioned, and thus closed source, was enough to know it would be dead in the cradle. There is no appetite in the space to use an entity like Meta; centralized, permissioned, and publicly traded are not the traits people are looking for in a blockchain.

Ultimately, Meta’s sheer power was actually the largest hindrance to diem. How’s that for irony?

Zuck has found a new lane, however, in the Metaverse, but there’s no guarantee that it won’t become the new Diem–or should I say, the old Diem. Maybe Zuckerberg will learn that the people want nothing less than a mega-corporation trying to graft their way into a space that prides itself on sovereignty, disruption, and trustlessness.

The real truth is that crypto and web 3.0 are a far cry from anything Zuck will ever offer. Because the whole point of Web 3.0 is disintermediation, which means Zuck loses power, and I don’ think he’d be a big fan of that.

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