Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta (formerly Facebook), due to numerous problems, including with regulators, decided to stop supporting its own crypto wallet.
On the official website of the Novi wallet, a message appeared stating that the wallet “will no longer be available for use after September 1st.” The Novi team warns users to withdraw all their assets stored on the platform before this date, as they will then be unavailable.
Several Meta executives pitched the idea of creating a wallet in 2019. It was to be called Libra and used to maintain a single global digital currency (similar to a stablecoin). Given Meta’s problems with regulators, the plan was almost immediately subjected to increased scrutiny by multiple regulators.
This led to many changes to the original plans, including the rebranding of Libra to Novi in October last year. The team, inspired by the Latin words novus (new) and via (way), defended the new name before the management. Novi is a beta wallet in partnership with Coinbase, which acts as an asset custodian and allows users to send money “as easy as messaging.”
In addition to launching a beta version of Novi, the developers promised a stablecoin called Diem. However, the project was not completed. Several former developers have decided to relaunch it under the name Aptos and have already raised $200 million to build the blockchain.
Instead of the Novi crypto project, Mark Zuckerberg’s company decided to launch a wallet for the Meta Pay metaverse. The new wallet is a rebrand of the existing Facebook Pay system, retaining previous features and adding new ones focused on the metaverse.
