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David Marcus, the leader of cryptocurrency efforts at company Meta formerly known as Facebook, said on Tuesday that he plans to leave his post at the end of the year.
Mr. Marcus, 48, a longtime Silicon Valley executive in payments and digital finance, has worked on multiple projects during his seven years at the social media company. He recently led Meta’s transition to a global digital currency that can be used by Facebook and WhatsApp users to transmit payments across borders. The project was originally called Libra, later renamed Diem facing pushback from the regulators.
“I am as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems,” said Mr Marcus. tweet thread. “My entrepreneurial DNA nags me too many mornings in a row to keep ignoring it.”
Mr. Marcus founded Zong, a mobile payments startup acquired by digital finance giant PayPal. After skyrocketing at PayPal, he was recruited by Facebook to run the Messenger app, bringing it to hundreds of millions of users.
While at Facebook, Mr. Marcus has been heavily involved in the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and has advised companies like Coinbase.
He passed this information on to Libra, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s pet project. Libra was an attempt to democratize finance in such a way that people could send cryptocurrencies to each other around the world using Facebook apps, including Messenger and WhatsApp, and eventually exchange them for local currencies.
The project stalled when a bipartisan coalition of legislators questioned the company’s efforts and how much power the social network had over global social media. Mr. Marcus witnessed the efforts He went to Congress in 2019, although he did little to allay concerns.
The Libra cryptocurrency was eventually rebranded as Diem, while the company’s efforts in a crypto wallet were named Novi. The confusion of names has been confusing, even to those inside the company.
Mr. Marcus did not specify his future plans. Meta spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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