"
Facebook will not launch Libra anywhere in the world until all US regulators have approved it
", had hammered Mark Zuckerberg during his hearing before the elected officials of the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee in October. 2019. Four years later, it seems that this digital currency project, since renamed Diem, will finally not be launched anywhere.
According to Bloomberg, citing a source familiar with the matter, the Diem association - responsible for piloting the construction of the blockchain-based payment system - has entered into discussions with investment banks to sell the project's intellectual property and re-use it as best as possible. the engineers working on it.
This sale would make it possible to reimburse investors who had initially bet on the Libra project, including Facebook, renamed Meta since last year.
Many departures
The resignations in 2021 of David Marcus, the original great architect of Libra, and several key people in the digital currency project, had already sealed the end of an ambition.
Since its announcement with fanfare in June 2019 and the panic generated among financial regulators around the world, the Libra project has continued to revise its scope downwards.
Several prestigious partners (Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Mercado Pago) had left the ship in the fall of 2019.
Renamed Diem, the project was first reduced to a set of stablecoins (a digital currency pegged to the dollar, euro, pound sterling, etc.), then a second time to a dollar stablecoin.
In May 2021, the Diem association left its Geneva headquarters for the United States and withdrew its application for a license as a payment system with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).
To focus solely on the US market, however, Diem remained dependent on a green light from regulators.
In May, the Diem association also explained that it had entered into a partnership with Silvergate Bank, a bank specializing in cryptoassets, which would have become the exclusive issuer of the stablecoin Diem US.
Fed Resistance
But all this was not enough to lift the resistance of the American Central Bank (FED), which would have dealt a final blow to the project according to the source quoted by Bloomberg.
Despite back and forth between its lawyers and the regulator, the Diem association would not have had the assurance of being able to launch its currency, the Fed not being comfortable with the project, according to the agency. hurry.
Neither the Fed, Diem Association, nor Meta commented.
It remains to be seen how a potential buyer could value Diem's intellectual property or re-employ the engineers who worked on the infrastructure.
According to Bloomberg, the discussions are only at the beginning and there is great uncertainty about the outcome.
The initial investments are divided between Meta and the twenty members of the Diem association (including Coinbase, Anchorage, Uber, Lyft, Iliad, etc.).
Everyone had to pay an entry ticket (a minimum of 10 million dollars) to be part of the adventure.