Announced in 2019, Meta’s digital currency project, formerly Facebook, has been officially abandoned by Mark Zuckerberg’s company. The assets of the Diem Association, in charge of the project, will be taken over by the Californian bank Silverbank Capital Corporation for $ 182 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Recall that at the base, Facebook wanted to create a payment method that would allow you to process money as quickly as sending an instant message. However, the project was quickly criticized and blocked by central banks, regulators and policymakers fearing that such a project would harm the stability of the financial system.
This reluctance had caused PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, initially interested in the project, to withdraw, forcing Facebook to revise its ambitions downwards. However, other major shareholders like Uber, Checkout.com, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase and Shopify had stayed, reports The Digital Factory.
However, it is a safe bet that Meta does not intend to completely abandon its cryptocurrency projects. The digital currency is undoubtedly a must of the metaverse, the virtual world on which the firm is working.
For Silvergate Capital, the holding company of Silvergate Bank, which has taken over Diem, as the latter already provides services to cryptocurrency developers, it will certainly know what to do with the remnants of the organization.
