Novi
US Senators Urge Facebook to Discontinue Crypto Wallet Pilot Citing ‘Insufficient’ Ability to Keep Consumers Safe
A group of U.S. senators has asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to discontinue his company’s crypto wallet pilot and commit to not bringing the cryptocurrency Diem to market. “Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient,” […]Facebook’s Novi Launches Pilot Program in Guatemala and US Using Pax Dollar
Novi, Facebook’s digital wallet, will launch a pilot program to test the functionality of the service in two countries: Guatemala and the U.S. The test will allow Novi to test all of its main functions and to evaluate what things need to be improved before launch. Novi will use pax dollars as the main currency […]Senators pressure Facebook to ‘immediately discontinue’ Novi wallet pilot
Facebook’s crypto wallet has been shot down by banking committee senators just hours after it launched a pilot.
Five Senators have called for the immediate closure of Facebook’s new crypto wallet just hours after it was launched in partnership with Coinbase.
Crypto skeptic Senator Elizabeth Warren was one of the five urging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “immediately discontinue” the project. In a letter sent to Zuckerberg on Oct. 19, the five Democrat Senators wrote:
“Given the scope of the scandals surrounding your company, we write to voice our strongest opposition to Facebook’s revived effort to launch a cryptocurrency and digital wallet, now branded 'Diem' and 'Novi,' respectively.”
Diem is Facebook’s ambitious stablecoin project, formerly known as Libra, which has been the subject of heavy scrutiny and regulatory roadblocks for years resulting in a number of key partners pulling out of the venture. Novi is the firm’s crypto wallet, designed to hold the Diem token and other stablecoins.
Novi launched a pilot in the U.S. and Guatemala on Oct. 19 in partnership with Coinbase which will provide crypto custody services. The pilot will enable users to acquire, send and receive Paxos Dollars (USDP) through their Novi account.
On Oct. 20, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong congratulated co-creator and a board member of Diem David Marcus, adding “it takes a lot of perseverance to ignore the haters and ship.”
The shot across the bow came from the office of Senator Brian Schatz and was co-signed by Tina Smith, Richard Blumenthal, banking committee chairperson Sherrod Brown, and Elizabeth Warren.
They stated that Facebook has repeatedly made conscious business decisions to continue with “actions that have harmed its users and the broader society,” adding:
“Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient.”
Related: One currency to rule them all: Facebook’s Diem has global ambitions
In a letter from the company announcing the pilot, Marcus stated “We intend to migrate Novi to the Diem payment network once it receives regulatory approval.”
The firm has far loftier ambitions than just a crypto wallet and stablecoin in the digital space. On Oct. 17 Facebook revealed plans to create 10,000 high-skilled jobs in the EU over the next five years to build its own metaverse.
Facebook Launches Novi Wallet With Paxos Stablecoin
Novi Rollout Met with Immediate Senate Resistance
Facebook Chooses Coinbase As Custody Partner for New Digital Wallet Rollout
Social media giant Facebook is launching the Novi crypto wallet today in the United States and Guatemala. The initial rollout only allows users to trade the Paxos Dollar (USDP) stablecoin, which is secured by Coinbase. An announcement on the Coinbase Blog says, “Novi users’ funds will be held within Coinbase Custody Trust Company, a qualified […]
The post Facebook Chooses Coinbase As Custody Partner for New Digital Wallet Rollout appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
Top engineers working on Facebook’s wallet jump ship to A16z’s crypto fund
The engineers will provide technical advice to Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio companies.
Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), a leading venture capital firm operating in the crypto sector, has nabbed two of the leading engineers working on Facebook’s digital currency project for its digital asset fund.
According to an Oct. 11 report from CNBC, Nassim Eddequiouaq and Riyaz Faizullabhoy have jumped ship from Facebook to A16z after spending two years working on the social media giant’s Novi digital wallet (formerly Calibra).
Faizullabhoy will serve as CTO while Eddequiouaq will take on the role of CIO at A16z’s crypto division. Faizullabhoy stated:
“Andreessen Horowitz has shown an impressive dedication to advancing the entire crypto ecosystem over the past decade, and we jumped at the chance to join their premier team and provide technical support to their rapidly-expanding portfolio.”
A16z founder, Marc Andreessen, has sat on Facebook’s board since 2008 — one year prior to the launch of Andreessen Horowitz.
Anthony Albanese, the COO of A16z, described the firm’s new talent as having a greater “opportunity to impact the crypto ecosystem on a very broad scale” through their new roles.
“They’re going to be advising our portfolio companies and protocols to help them make sure that they have the most secure and sophisticated systems around,” said Albanese, adding that their previous roles at Facebook were much more “specific.”
Eddequiouaq and Faizullabhoy also worked at crypto custody firm Anchorage before joining Facebook’s Novi project.
The pair are not the first engineers to have abandoned Facebook’s digital currency project, with Novi head of strategy Morgan Beller joining VC firm NFX in September 2020 and co-creator Kevin Weil heading to satellite imagery company Planet Labs in March of this year.
Related: Andreessen Horowitz launches biggest-ever crypto venture fund at $2.2B
While Andreessen Horowitz is viewed as a leading crypto venture firm due to its successful and early investments into the likes of Coinbase, Compound, and OpenSea, the firm has recently attracted controversy regarding how its governance voting rights for top decentralized exchange Uniswap have been disbursed.
While A16z’s votes have been divested to university law schools including the Harvard Law Blockchain and Fintech Initiative (BFI), the Harvard BFI launched a governance proposal in May advocating for the creation of a decentralized finance lobbying group dubbed the DeFi Education Fund (DEF). The proposal recommended transferring $20 million worth of UNI to the group to fund its operations, with the group assuring that it would gradually sell the tokens over the course of four to five years.
However, less than two weeks after the proposal passed and the tokens were transferred to the DEF at the start of June, the DEF suddenly announced it had liquidated $10 million worth of UNI to the shock of the DeFi community, attracting criticism of both the DEF and A16z.