Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Facebook cryptocurrency chief David Marcus announced today that he’s leaving the company. The former PayPal executive joined Facebook in 2014 to run Messenger but eventually took over plans to launch a new cryptocurrency and wallet, known at the time as Libra and Calibra, respectively.
After some pre-Meta name changes, the digital wallet launched with a small pilot in October under the name Novi but only in two countries (the US and Guatemala) and support for a single form of crypto, the Paxos stablecoin. The currency that spurred so much ire from regulators and politicians around the world, now called Diem, has yet to appear.
In posts on his Facebook page and Twitter, Marcus says, “While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of…
