WASHINGTON – Facebook is ready to launch a digital wallet that will let users store cryptocurrencies, a senior company executive said in an interview yesterday.
David Marcus, head of Facebook’s crypto unit, told news site The Information, that company leaders “feel pretty committed” to launch the digital wallet, called Novi, this year.
Marcus said he prefers to release Novi alongside Diem, a digital currency tied to the dollar that the company is also developing, but Diem’s timing is uncertain.
“In theory, Novi can launch before Diem, but it will mean launching without Diem and that’s not necessarily something that we want to do,” Marcus told The Information.
“It all depends on how long it’s going to take for Diem to actually go live and that’s not something I’m personally looking after.”
In 2019, Facebook said it plans to introduce a cryptocurrency, that at the time, was called Libra. The project, however, faced regulatory resistance over concerns about security and reliability.
In December 2020, Libra changed its name to Diem and moved its operations from Switzerland to the US as part of a “strategic shift”. – AFP, August 26, 2021
