Facebook in the Cryptocurrency World: Story of a Fiasco.

The danger of Libra/Diem was far too great in the eyes of American regulators.

It seems like a long time ago that Facebook wanted to “change the world” with its cryptocurrency project. Yet, just three years ago, the tech giant led by Mark Zuckerberg announced with great fanfare the launch of its cryptocurrency named Libra, which came with its software wallet also developed by Facebook.

In 2020, Facebook decided to change the name of the wallet to Novi, and that of the crypto-currency to Diem. Finally, in 2021, the Facebook group itself changed its name to Meta.

All these procrastinations illustrate the extent of the crisis that has hit the Californian group in recent years. Imagined in 2017, before the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this cryptocurrency project was unveiled at a time when the Californian group was already in turmoil. It met with hostility from regulators, who put so many obstacles in its way that Mark Zuckerberg eventually gave up.

Looking back on the Libra/Diem project, it's clear to me that it was something doomed to fail. Announcing a global cryptocurrency without even having a compliance team would have been unwise enough for any company. For a firm like Facebook, with global reach and suffering from a bad rap with regulators, it was a death knell for the project.