By Joseph Branch in IT —

Meta started looking for a buyer for its Diem cryptocurrency project - Bloomberg Regulators from 2020 insist that the company stop developing the project.

Meta started looking for a buyer for its Diem cryptocurrency project - Bloomberg Regulators from 2020 insist that the company stop developing the project.
Photo by Steve Johnson / Unsplash

Diem Association wants to sell its assets to return money to investors, Bloomberg writes, citing sources close to the negotiations.

They said Diem is in discussions with investment bankers to sell intellectual property and find new jobs for its developers.

Meta owns a third of the company, one of the sources said. Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Uber, Shopify and others own the rest. Diem and Meta declined to comment.

In June 2019, Facebook announced the launch of Libra cryptocurrency and a wallet to use it. Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe and eBay also joined the association, but announced in early October that they were leaving the project.
The company had planned to release the currency in 2020, but faced criticism from regulators, who feared Libra could affect the dollar or euro exchange rate, as well as facilitate money laundering and terrorist financing.
In May 2020, the social network created an independent "subsidiary" to develop a cryptocurrency wallet to show that Libra is not owned by the social network, and Facebook is only in association with other companies.
In May 2021, Diem said it would issue a cryptocurrency, with Silvergate Bank as the issuer. In the summer, the Federal Reserve (FED) said it could not assure the bank that it would approve Diem's work. The bank declined to issue, Bloomberg reported.
In October, members of the Senate sent a letter to Facebook urging them to abandon the project because the company "cannot be trusted to manage cryptocurrency." At the same time, the company began testing Novi cryptocurrency wallet in the U.S. and Guatemala.
In November 2021, the regulator clarified that Stablecoin issuers should be regulated by banks if the tokens could be used to buy and sell things. And combining an issuer with a large corporation "could lead to an excessive concentration of economic power," the agency cites the FED's position.