A lot it appears if you are in the sights of every regulator. Late last year the Libra project quietly changed its name to Diem, as in “carpe diem”. The renaming of the Facebook project appears to be an effort to distance itself from the regulatory backlash triggered by the initial announcement of the proposed global stable coin.
Press from the company reported by Bloomberg and the FT at the time of the name change indicates a leaner 27 member consortium and a single fiat backed (USD) stable coin. The project appears to be moving more within the bounds of the existing regulatory system and dropping the idea of a permissionless network.
The response from the G7 in October expressed the view that prior to becoming operational any stable coin needed to be appropriately supervised and regulated, addressing the relevant legal, regulatory, and oversight requirements to protect financial stability, privacy, consumer protections, taxation, cybersecurity and compliance with AML guidelines.
Adding all this up it looks like Diem has lost a lot of the conceptual differentiators that drew so much attention in the original Libra white paper. The project almost risks looking similar to the existing Stable (fiat backed) coins in the market, apart for one key element.
Facebook has 2 billion users and is already operating as super scaled platform with an existing level of user acceptance for platform payments. Diem has the potential to turn its stable coin into an everyday payments option and the digital wallet for one of the World’s largest networks.
Diem may yet seize the day
(header image by Pexels)
