In this March 29, 2018, file photo is the Facebook logo on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite, in New York's Times Square. A once-ambitious Facebook-backed digital currency project — formerly known as Libra, now called Diem — is shifting operations from Switzerland to the U.S. and said it plans to launch a cryptocurrency tied to the U.S. dollar later in 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
By Barbara Ortutay
A once-ambitious Facebook-backed digital currency project — formerly known as Libra, now called Diem — is shifting operations from Switzerland to the U.S. and said it plans to launch a cryptocurrency tied to the U.S. dollar later this year.
As part of the move, Diem said it is also withdrawing its application for a payment system license from the Swiss Financial Markets Authority, which it has not been able to secure thus far.
The Diem Association, which includes Facebook and 25 other companies, said Wednesday has it entered a partnership with Silvergate Capital Corp. to issue a “stablecoin” backed by the U.S. dollar. A stablecoin is a digital currency backed by real-world assets such as national currencies or other commodities.
As the name implies, stablecoins are designed to not fluctuate wildly in value. That's in sharp contrast to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, whose value is not tied to a real-world currency and whose price has ranged between roughly $9,000 and $63,000 over the past year.
Facebook announced the Libra project in 2019, at the time envisioning it as a stablecoin based on a basket of national currencies. Since then, the effort has been scaled back considerably amid regulatory and commercial backlash. It underwent a name change in December 2020.
Wednesday's announcement represents a further scaling back as Diem shifts focus to the U.S. from its original ambitions to become a global currency for the unbanked around the world.
As the Federal Reserve prepares to hold its annual economic conference in Jackson Hole on Friday and Saturday, its policymakers are trying to guide the U.S. economy toward something akin to what's happening in Jackson Hole.
Anyone in the U.S. who had an account at any time between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, is eligible to receive a payment. The 2022 settlement resolves a lawsuit alleging that Facebook allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Irrigation might have saved Jackson's hay, but she and her husband rejected the idea about 10 years ago over the cost: as much as $75,000 for a new well and all the equipment. But now — with an extended drought and another U.S. heat wave this week that will broil her land about an hour northwest of Dallas for days in 100-degree-plus temperatures — Jackson said she is “kind of rethinking.”
