Meta Says Adios to Diem – But Its Buyer Wants to Launch a Token of its Own

cryptonews.com:

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is set to wash its hands of its ill-fated Diem stablecoin plans once and for all – but there may yet be a twist in the tale as the firm that will buy the coin’s assets and intellectual property (IP) could yet launch a token of its own.

Silvergate Capital, a banking firm with digital asset interests and a sometime Diem partner confirmed to CNBC that it intends to launch a stablecoin by the end of this year.

In an announcement posted on its website, the Diem Foundation, essentially Meta and its partners on the project, “announced the sale of its IP and other assets related to the running of the Diem payment network” to Silvergate. 

Silvergate also confirmed the deal, and its CEO Alan Lane, appeared overjoyed with the deal, remarking to the media outlet that they "think the potential worth is off the charts when we think about using the blockchain technology for payments and remittance."

Lane also added:

“We were working last year with Diem and we got to know the team very well, and we couldn’t be more excited to essentially be taking the reigns and bringing a stablecoin to market hopefully later this year.”

Lane called the Meta/Facebook engineers who had developed Diem “over the last couple years” a group of “truly world-class engineers.”

And the Silvergate boss claimed that the Diem project – under its new guise and leadership – might finally do what stablecoin issuers have been hoping to do since the tokens’ outset: namely find a niche in the payments world. Until recently, stablecoins have mainly been used as a gateway for crypto trading.

Lane agreed that existing stablecoins “are primarily used for cryptocurrency trading,” but spoke about creating a stablecoin “that could be used