Over the coming weeks, the Diem Association and its subsidiaries expect to begin the process of winding down, the association’s statement said
The Facebook-backed digital currency project Diem announced Monday the winding down and $182-million sale of its technology, capping a years-long initiative that drew significant concern from regulators.
Facebook’s announcement in 2019 of plans to design a cryptocurrency and payment system raised immediate red flags for global finance officials, who expressed a barrage of criticism about the security and reliability of a private network.
Diem Networks’ US CEO Stuart Levey said in a statement that the initiative made progress, but ‘it nevertheless became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead.’
Over the coming weeks, the Diem Association and its subsidiaries expect to begin the process of winding down, the association’s statement said.
The technology was bought by Silvergate Capital Corporation in California that is a go-to for crypto projects, and which put the sale price at $182 million.
Silvergate bought development, deployment and operations infrastructure, as well as tools for running a blockchain-based payment network for payments as well as cross-border wire transfers.
As we undertook this effort, we actively sought feedback from governments and regulators around the world, and the project evolved substantially and improved as a result, the Diem association’s statement said.
Pressed by regulators’ concerns about a currency managed by a private company, the project was previously entrusted to an independent entity based in Geneva.
After the defection of several major partners such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, the organization scaled back its ambitions, before renaming itself Diem at the end of 2020.
The so-called stablecoin, a type of digital money tied to other kinds of assets, never launched.
The combination of a stablecoin issuer or wallet provider and a commercial firm could lead to an excessive concentration of economic power, US regulators said in a 2021 report.