Closes Novi, Meta’s digital wallet linked to the project of the (never taken off) cryptocurrency Diem: Menlo Park recommends withdrawing the balance “as soon as possible”.
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After the emergence of an internal note with which employees were expected to have tough months for this end of 2022, Meta announced, this time in an official way, another bad news, relating to the closure of its cryptowallet Novi, at the height of a process of reducing the initial intent to launch the proprietary cryptocurrency Libra, later renamed Diem.
Last October, Meta, formerly Facebook Inc, announced the test of the Novi wallet, formerly Caliber, in the USA and Guatemala, to help transfer remittances across borders: the experiment, supported by Coinbase, was based not on the cryptocurrency Diem, but on the stablecoin Pax Dollar, which offered “important regulatory and consumer protection attributes”. Then, in November, with a surprise blow, the head of the Diem and Novi project, David Marcus, resigned in November, announcing the exit from Meta by the end of 2021.
At the beginning of 2022, Stuart Levey, CEO of Diem, announced the disposal of the assets of Diem, sold in full to Silvergate: at that point, only the Novi portfolio remained, still under test.
The use of the past is a must, given that Meta has announced that on September 1, 2022 it will close the Novi wallet: users will be able to deposit funds until July 20, but Menlo Park advised, as regards the balance in the wallet, to withdraw the funds as soon as possible, although there will still be automatic attempts to route the remaining funds to the credit cards and current accounts of users, even after the service is closed.
Meta, in communicating all this, however, explained that he had treasured the experience gained in introducing new products, such as digital collectibles (whose adoption is spreading everywhere, under the name of Digital Collectibles) and that there will be again of the commitment to w3, for the “value that these technologies can bring to people and companies in the metaverse“. In this sense, the name has recently been changed to Facebook Pay, now Meta Pay, which is also destined to become a sort of wallet for the metaverse.