Diem done. Paschal Donohoe’s last meeting with Facebook and David Marcus
Reports are swirling this week that Facebook-owner Meta is selling off Diem, its cryptocurrency division. The project, first unveiled in 2019 and then known as Libra, has faced a barrage of criticism and watering down since it was announced with regulators being none too impressed. Facebook’s reputation taking a battering in recent years hasn’t helped either.
This saw the idea for Libra/Diem whittled down from its grandiose cryptocurrency tied to a ‘basket’ of fiat currencies to stablecoins pegged to each individual currency. Stripe, Mastercard, PayPal and several others pulled out of the project and a few months ago, Diem’s boss David Marcus quit. Now according to the Wall Street Journal, Diem’s assets are to be sold off to Silvergate Capital for $200 million.
Since 2019, Facebook/Meta has been in contact with Ireland’s Department of Finance about its efforts but those contacts began to run dry about a year ago — lining up with the project’s slogging existence in general.
In December 2020, Facebook Ireland’s head Gareth Lambe (he has since left the company) wrote to Paschal Donohoe to ask that he meet with David Marcus.
On January 25 2021, Donohoe had a virtual meeting with Marcus. Lambe and Facebook Ireland’s head of public policy Dualta O Broin and several others were on the call too.
The Minister’s briefing notes flagged that the Diem Association had lost several members, the ECB’s digital euro report and other statements from EU bodies on stablecoins.
Minutes from the meeting were not terribly illuminating.
The minutes noted that the two sides would meet again later in 2021 but my FOI requests for that time period yielded nothing. So that’s that it.
