Goodbye, Diem! So what did Zuckerberg do wrong?

Diem, the stablecoin project formerly known as Libra launched by Facebook — now Meta — in June 2019 is selling its assets and closing up shop following the departure a couple of months ago of David Marcus, who headed the project.

As someone who was against the idea of a currency managed by Mark Zuckerberg’s company from the very beginning, I welcome the news. But the question, given that my opinion carries no weight and that the reason the project has been dropped is opposition from the regulators, is why, given his company’s resources, Mark Zuckerberg was unable to make a success of Diem/Libra.

Stablecoins and cryptocurrencies are not that difficult to manage: there are dozens out there, and some have even been launched simply as a joke. The most successful stablecoin, Tether, has been around since 2014, has a market capitalization of $78.3 billion, and is a parallel financial system with more daily and annual exchange volume than the flagship Bitcoin.

That being the case, what prevented Mark Zuckerberg from getting his project off the ground? Simply, the same regulatory authorities that have given the green light to projects like Tether (with some occasional resistance, but not so much) and many others, found so many problems with Zuckerberg’s plans that he was forced to abandon the idea.