TL;DR Breakdown
- Jack Dorsey says Diem was a waste of time.
- Preached that Meta should have focused on Bitcoin.
- Meta still open to other crypto project despite Diem failure.
Former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey has said that Facebook now Meta native crypto (Diem) was a waste of time. He said the social media giant should have focused on Bitcoin instead.’
Meta (formerly Facebook) started the development of its own stablecoin Libra in 2019. Facing public backlash, it tried rebranding it to Libra. Now, Zuckerberg’s company finally gave up, selling Diem’s intellectual property to an investment bank.
Dorsey, shared his views on the failed project with Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy. The ex-Twitter boss said Meta’s mistake was working on a currency it owned – instead of using an open protocol like Bitcoin.
“Hopefully, they learned a lot, but I think there was a lot of wasted effort and time,” Dorsey said. He added that they could have spent those two or three years of development making BTC more accessible.
“This would also benefit their Messenger product, Instagram, and WhatsApp, he added. We have these open network right now, and it’s usable.”
Meta still open to other crypto projects despite selling Diem
The Diem stablecoin’s assets and intellectual property have been sold by Meta to Silvergate, which will use the offerings to boost a stablecoin effort. The stablecoin project encountered several issues with regulators, who feared that it would give Meta (Facebook) too much influence. Meta has now joined the Crypto Open Patent Alliance to support the open development of crypto technologies.
Diem had undergone a rebranding and made several concessions to appease regulators to no avail. It even launched the Novi digital wallet but eventually resulted in selling anyway.
Meta’s focus on crypto has not disappeared, however. The company reportedly aims to launch an NFT marketplace on its platform and allow users to create and display NFTs on Instagram, though no official statements on these matters have been made.
