The top executive in charge of Facebook’s effort to get into cryptocurrency and international money transfer, David Marcus, has announced in a tweet that he would step down by the end of the year.
Marcus joined Facebook in 2014 to run the company’s Messenger service but eventually took over the Libra blockchain currency and the Calibra digital wallet project in June 2019.
According to the company, the project, which was supposed to go live in 2020, would allow its users to make payments and send money online to anyone in the world via Facebook products.
The projects never saw the light of the day in 2020 after Facebook faced stiff backlash against its cryptocurrency ambition from lawmakers and regulators worldwide. The company in October, finally released its digital wallet renamed as Novi but the digital currency, named Diem is controlled by an independent association.
Marcus’s departure comes months after the company began hitting the wall when it relaunched the 2020 Libra blockchain currency and the Calibra digital wallet which allows users to use cryptocurrency to make payments and send money to anyone in the world via Facebook products.
Marcus disclosed that Stephanie Kasriel will take over as head of the company’s Novi financial products division.
Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in a comment on Marcus’s Facebook said the company wouldn’t have taken such a big swing at Diem without Marcus’s leadership. He said “I’m grateful you’ve made Meta a place where we make those big bets”.
