Jack Dorsey is an American technological entrepreneur most famous for being the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter and Block head. He revealed his attitude towards the issue of Meta’s stablecoin. Dorsey is certain that the idea to create one was initially ready to fail. What the experiment gives as a result is experience to learn from. The reasons to start Diem were right ones, but they should have used an open-ended protocol for the coin like Bitcoin. The attempt to create its own currency, its own closed system couldn’t bring to success.
Jack Dorsey shared his ideas at the MicroStrategy World conference, “They tried to create a currency that was owned by Facebook – probably for the right reasons, probably for noble reasons – but there were also some reasons that would indicate trying to get more and more people onto the Facebook ecosystem”.
On February 1, the Meta company gave up the issuance of a stablecoin confirming the sale of assets and intellectual property of its subsidiary Diem Association. The Diem team explained that throughout the process of developing their own stablecoin, they actively interacted with regulators and what’s more they received positive feedback.
Despite that, the developers understand the implications of impossibility to develop the project further. “Despite giving us positive substantive feedback on the design of the network, it nevertheless became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead,” Levey said. “As a result, the best path forward was to sell the Diem Group’s assets, as we have done today to Silvergate.”
When we look back to the first efforts of Meta, we face the first half of 2020. The company planned to release its own stablecoin, but regulators declared numerous warnings towards the launch. Then we observe the change of the name to rebrand the project, Libra is left in shadow, and Diem appears.
In 2021, David Markus, who was a Diem founder, left Meta and the project entered into a partnership with Silvergate Capital Corp. to issue their own stablecoin, but it didn’t succeed. Diem Association, founded by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has sold all its crypto project assets to Silvergate. The deal is valued at $ 182 million, including the transfer of all intellectual property and technology assets related to the payment network.
Silvergate acquired from Diem the infrastructure to develop and operate a blockchain-based payment network. The acquisition includes proprietary software elements that are critical to the operation of the stablecoin network. The bank says this will increase the technical capabilities of Silvergate and give impetus to the implementation of the infrastructure for stablecoin.
The new owner said that the network had been operating in the pre-launch mode for two years and had shown high quality in terms of security and reliability. Silvergate CEO Alan Lane explained that Silvergate customers need a stable dollar-backed coin that will allow them to transfer funds without barriers.
Jack Dorsey plans to make Bitcoin the focus of his new company Block, formerly known as Square. The developer emphasizes on the importance of working with Bitcoin. “Those two or three years or however long it’s been could’ve been spent making Bitcoin more accessible for more people around the world.”
Dorsey is sure that making BTC more accessible would also benefit many of Meta’s products. “We have this open network right now. And it’s usable. It’s not accessible to everyone, but it’s usable. The easier we make it, the faster we make it, the more approachable we make it, it’s going to better everything. Including everything Facebook intended to do with Libra.”