‘Facebooks crypto platform Diem is sold to bank’

The Diem Association, Facebook’s cryptocurrency consortium, is disbanding. The company is selling its technology to a US bank. With that, Facebook’s much-discussed cryptocoin project seems to be coming to an end.

The consortium would liquidate itself and sell most of its parts to California’s Silvergate Capital bank, The Wall Street Journal reported citing sources. Silvergate had previously signed a deal with Diem to issue several stablecoins. It is unknown how much money is involved in the deal. The newspaper did not give any further details.

The sale seems to be the end of the cryptocurrency project that Facebook, now called Meta, started in 2019. Facebook then founded Libra with the aim of setting up its own cryptocurrency. That was to become a stablecoin with which users could pay on Facebook’s platforms. Later, big names such as Mastercard, PayPal and banks joined the project.

The cryptocurrency project has been controversial from day one. Politics soon turned to regulation. Later, major partners withdrew from the project. In December 2020, the Libra Association changed its name. Since then, the consortium of remaining companies has been called the Diem Association. His plan was to release not one, but several stablecoins. The project has never released a definitive coin other than some experiments. However, Meta released the Novi wallet last year to be able to trade with other stablecoins.