David Marcus, the long-serving Facebook executive in charge of the company’s dormant cryptocurrency plans, is leaving the company. Marcus announced in a Facebook post that he will leave the company at the end of 2021.
The former PayPal executive joined Facebook in 2014 and served as Messenger’s CEO for four years before leaving to launch Facebook’s blockchain division. Since then, he has been in charge of Meta’s long-troubled cryptocurrency plans, as well as other payment products such as Facebook Pay.
While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of launching Novi — and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems — my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it. (2/7)
— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) November 30, 2021
Marcus has spent the last two years attempting to launch Novi, the company’s cryptocurrency wallet. Earlier this year, he announced a “small pilot” of the wallet in the United States and Guatemala. However, the wallet did not include support for Diem, the cryptocurrency Marcus co-founded previously known as Libra. That project, which is now independent of Meta, has been repeatedly postponed due to opposition from regulators and officials all over the world. Even the news of Novi’s test elicited an immediate response from lawmakers, who urged the company to halt the test based on disclosures from a whistleblower.
Marcus stated on Facebook that “the Novi years were the most mission-driven and intellectually stimulating” of his time at the company. He stated that he intends to take a break before starting “something new and interesting again.”
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