Published on January 28, 2022
In AI News

Meta abandons its Crypto ambitions

Meta revealed its plans to roll out a digital wallet ‘Calibra’ and a virtual coin ‘Libra’ in June 2019.

By Meeta Ramnani

Facebook (now known as Meta) founded The Diem Association in 2019 to build a payments network. The company is now selling its technology to California-based bank Silvergate Capital Corp for about USD 200 million.

Meta revealed its plans to roll out a digital wallet ‘Calibra’ and a virtual coin ‘Libra’ in June 2019. Later, they renamed the wallet to Novi in May 2020.

The Libra project aimed at helping Facebook users spend money as easily as sending a text message.

Libra partnered with eBay, Mastercard, Stripe, PayPal, and Visa to launch the project. In fact, the partners had also agreed to join the Libra Association, a Switzerland-based group that would govern the stablecoin. Libra sparked concerns over its effect on financial stability, data privacy and the potential to be misused for nefarious purposes.

Meta owns one third of the venture and other partners include Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Singapore state-owned investor Temasek Holdings Pte.

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Meeta Ramnani

Meeta’s interest lies in finding out real practical applications of technology. At AIM, she writes stories that question the new inventions and the need to develop them. She believes that technology has and will continue to change the world very fast and that it is no more ‘cool’ to be ‘old-school’. If people don’t update themselves with the technology, they will surely be left behind.