David Marcus, one of the top executives at Meta Platforms Inc. and the co-creator of the yet-to-be-launched\u00a0Diem digital currency, is leaving the company after seven years to pursue other projects.<\/p>\n
Marcus, who joined the Facebook parent company in 2014 from PayPal Holdings Inc., ran the Messenger service for years before moving over to form the company\u2019s blockchain division in 2018.<\/p>\n
He spent the last few years building Novi, the company\u2019s digital wallet that\u00a0launched in October<\/a><\/strong>, and co-founded Diem, a digital currency formerly known as Libra that was intended as a way for people to send money cross-border.<\/p>\n Getting Diem off the ground has proven to be a struggle for Meta and Marcus. Since the project was unveiled\u00a0in 2019 \u2014 with great fanfare and dozens of partners \u2014\u00a0the currency\u2019s debut has been delayed and its original ambitions have been\u00a0scaled back<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Diem\u00a0faced pushback\u00a0from lawmakers and regulators when it was announced, and while Meta is still a partner on the effort, Diem\u00a0is now run independently.<\/p>\n Marcus\u2019s departure adds more uncertainty to Meta\u2019s digital payment push, but the longtime\u00a0entrepreneur and angel investor\u00a0says he has an itch to create something outside the company.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile there\u2019s still so much to do right on the heels of hitting an important milestone with Novi launching \u2014 and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems \u2014 my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it,\u201d according to a blog post he plans to publish\u00a0Tuesday.<\/p>\n Marcus, 48, plans to leave the company at the end of the year. Stephane Kasriel, the former chief executive officer of Upwork Inc. who joined Meta in August 2020, will take over Marcus\u2019s role leading Novi and other payments projects.<\/p>\n Marcus was involved in a number of major projects at Meta during his tenure, and was a trusted lieutenant to CEO\u00a0Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n He took over Messenger in 2014 when the company spun the service out of the main Facebook service into its own stand-alone app, angering users but giving Messenger more room to build features like bots and video calling.<\/p>\n Marcus may be best remembered for Diem, though. The effort was opposed\u00a0by regulators worried about Meta\u2019s role in financial markets. And with scrutiny on Meta only growing this year, the project remains in limbo.<\/p>\n David Marcus, one of the top executives at Meta Platforms Inc. and the co-creator of the yet-to-be-launched\u00a0Diem digital currency, is leaving the company after seven years to pursue other projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":425598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[20143,74738,161,40812],"class_list":["post-425594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-david-marcus","tag-diem-cryptocurrency","tag-facebook","tag-meta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Omicron crypto surges after naming of new Covid-19 variant<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"