Five senators have called for the immediate shutdown of Facebook’s new crypto wallet. This happened just hours after it launched in partnership with Coinbase.
Five senators take action against Facebook
Elizabeth Warren was one of five senators who urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to immediately halt the project. In a letter to Zuckerberg, the five senators wrote:
“Given the magnitude of the scandals surrounding your company, we are writing this letter to express our disgust at Facebook’s renewed effort to launch a crypto currency and digital wallet. This applies to ‘Diem’ and ‘Novi’.”
Diem is Facebook’s ambitious stablecoin project. Formerly known as Libra, which has been the subject of heavy scrutiny and regulatory roadblocks for years. This has led to a number of key partners withdrawing from the company. Novi is the company’s crypto wallet, designed for the Diem token and other stablecoins.
On October 20, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong congratulated Diem co-creator and board member David Marcus. He added:
“It takes a lot of perseverance to ignore the haters.”
Ambitions in the crypto world
The final push came from the office of Senator Brian Schatz and was co-signed by Tina Smith, Richard Blumenthal, Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown, and Elizabeth Warren.
They stated that Facebook has repeatedly made conscious business decisions to continue the actions that have harmed its users and society. They added:
“Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risk and keep consumers safe has proven to be totally inadequate.”
In a letter from the company announcing the testing, Marcus stated:
“We plan to migrate Novi to the Diem payment network once it has received regulatory approval.”
The company has much higher ambitions than just a crypto wallet and stablecoin in the digital world. On October 17, Facebook unveiled plans to create 10,000 highly skilled jobs in the EU over the next five years to build its own metaverse.