Facing crashing prices and regulatory hurdles, Facebook parent company Meta (FB) is winding down its ambitious cryptocurrency project.
Originally launched as “Libra” and later renamed the “Diem Association,” Meta’s cryptocurrency initiative is weighing a sale of its assets as a way to return capital to investors, according to media reports.
Diem is reportedly in discussions with investment bankers about how best to sell its intellectual property and find a new home for the engineers who developed the technology.
Regulatory hurdles and crashing cryptocurrency prices apparently doomed the fledgling project that was launched in 2019.
Facebook and 20 partner organizations had formally joined the digital currency project during a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in October 2019.
In a move to win over regulators, the association had announced that its cryptocurrency will offer stable coins backed by just one nation's currency, meaning some coins offered would serve as the equivalent value of a U.S. dollar or a Euro.
However, several heavyweights pulled out of the cryptocurrency project in recent months, including PayPal (PYPL), Mastercard (MA), Visa (V), and eBay (EBAY), among others.
