Facebook-backed Diem Association may be close to dissolving

Its looking more and more likely that Diem, Metas ill-fated cryptocurrency previously known as Libra, will never actually materialize. The Diem Association is reportedly weighing a sale of its assets as a way to return capital to its investor members, Bloombergreports.

Its unclear what assets the Diem Association owns, but the report notes the group is talking to bankers about selling its intellectual property and finding "a new home for the engineers that developed the technology.

If a sale were to happen, it would seem to be the final nail in the coffin for Diem, the cryptocurrency project that Mark Zuckerberg has championed. Plans to get the stablecoin off the ground have stalled for years amid regulatory pushback and lawmaker concerns. After first launching as Libra, several high-profile partners pulled out in 2019.

Last fall, Facebook started a small pilot of Novi, the cryptocurrency wallet formerly known as Calibra. But the fact that Novi was forced to launch without support for Diem it used a different stablecoin called the Pax Dollar was a sign that Diem's future remained uncertain. Longtime Facebook exec David Marcus, who oversaw the social networks crypto plans, said at the time that Facebook remained committed to Diem. I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasnt changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live, he wrote. Marcus announced a month later that he was leaving Facebook.

A representative for the Diem Association said that Bloomberg's reporting contained unspecified "factual errors," but declined to elaborate or comment further.