Meta abandons plans to issue its own cryptocurrency

The company considered selling the intellectual property of its cryptocurrency project the best waysolve problems with the regulator.

Diem Association, the company's cryptocurrency projectMeta (formerly Facebook), announced the sale of intellectual property and other assets to Silvergate Capital Corporation. The parties do not disclose the terms of the deal. Last week, the WSJ, citing anonymous sources, reported that Meta was ready to sell its cryptocurrency project for $200 million.

Diem explained that throughout the processthe development of its own stablecoin actively interacted with regulators and received positive feedback from them. Despite this, it became clear to the developers that the project could not develop further.

“The best way out was to sell the assets of Diem Group, which we did,” the press release says.

Meta was planning to launch its own stablecoinin the first half of 2020, but abandoned these plans due to warnings from regulators. At the same time, the company rebranded the project, changing the name of the stablecoin from Libra to Diem due to the fact that the early version received a lot of negativity.

In 2021, Diem founder David Marcus retired fromMeta, and the project entered into a partnership with Silvergate Capital Corp. to issue their own stablecoin. According to Fortune sources, US Federal Reserve officials told Silvergate Bank, which is owned by Silvergate Capital and was supposed to be the issuer of Diem USD, that they are concerned about the issuance of a stablecoin and cannot approve it. Due to pressure from the regulator, Silvergate Bank refused to issue a stablecoin, sources say.

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