Diem was introduced as an idea in 2019 and has encountered opposition ever since.

Diem, Facebook's long-term stablecoin project, is finally coming to an end. On Monday, an independent investment group, Silvergate Bank, said it was purchasing $182 million in Diem assets from the tech giant, bringing a conclusion to a long-awaited — and somewhat turbulent — exit.

"Despite providing us with constructive feedback on the network's architecture, it became evident from our discussions with federal regulators that the project could not proceed," Diem CEO Stuart Levey wrote on the project's previous website. "Which a result, the best course of action was to sell the Diem Group's assets to Silvergate, as we have done today."

Diem—then called "Libra"—was first proposed by Facebook in the summer of 2019 with the purpose of developing a "simple global payment system and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people." However, because this is a Facebook brand, almost everyone was wary; authorities in both the EU and the US expressed reservations about the concept, with Europe's antitrust authority beginning an investigation into it shortly after it was unveiled.

Then came partner-related headaches. Following months of regulatory investigation, several of the project's initial investors, including PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa, abandoned ship, and things only got worse from there. The name change was followed by a narrowing of the scope: what was initially intended to be a worldwide supported cryptocurrency became available solely in the United States after failing to gain permission from Swiss payment regulators. Executives on the team in charge of Diem's mainstream push, such as David Marcus, left the firm shortly thereafter. Facebook's Novi blockchain wallet revealed at the end of last year that it would begin accepting payments in Pax Dollars (USDP), rather than Diem, as initially envisaged.

Diem is not the only contentious project that Facebook revealed this week would be shuttered. On the same day as Silvergate's announcement, Israeli media revealed for the first time that the business was shutting down its Express Wi-Fi initiative, which had provided low-cost internet services to regions in India, Indonesia, and other parts of the global south for the previous six years. Similarly to Diem, regulators worldwide were suspicious of the wi-fi plan, with countries such as Bangladesh outright prohibiting the programme from operating in rural areas due to security and licensing concerns.

The shutdown is confirmed by an announcement on the Facebook (sorry, Meta) website. "After more than five years of operation, we intend to discontinue our Express Wi-Fi programme," the company stated.

"In collaboration with our partners, we contributed to the expansion of public Wi-Fi access in over 30 countries through the Express Wi-Fi platform. While we are wrapping up this programme to focus on other initiatives, we remain dedicated to collaborating with partners across the telecom industry to improve connectivity."

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