- Meta’s Novi wallet will shut down 15 months after it was announced
- The crypto wallet was the only horse left in Meta’s crypto stable after its sale of Diem in January
- The Whatsapp pilot will end in September, when the project will be wound down
Meta’ digital currency dreams are vanishing quicker than its user base after announcing that its Novi wallet was to be discontinued just 15 months after it was announced. Novi, which got as far as experimentational integration into Whatsapp, was all that was left after Meta sold its disastrous digital currency Diem to crypto bank Silvergate Capital in January, and now Novi is biting the dust too. The wallet will not be available for download from September 1, with Meta offering instructions on how users can remove their balances before the pilot, and the entire project, comes to an ignominious end.
Time Called on Meta’s Digital Currency Dreams
Meta’s digital currency venture has gone through various guides since its announcement of the Libra currency rattled regulatory cages in June 2019, since when everything has gone downhill for the project, which never really got off the ground in any meaningful way.
Libra was renamed and reimagined multiple times before being abandoned and sold off to Silvergate at the start of the year, which left Novi, the cryptocurrency wallet that was supposed to make “sending money to family and friends as easy as sending a message”, as the last horse in the stable.
Novi was announced in April of last year, with the same concerns raised by governments.
Novi Bites The Dust
Novi’s test integration into Whatsapp was announced in December last year, a week after Libra/Diem/Novi’s chief architect David Marcus abandoned the sinking ship, and Meta has now given up all hope of it ever seeing the light of day, with a notice on its website alluding to this fact:
Once this deadline passes, Meta’s digital currency project, which was started when the company was still called Facebook and initially threatened to capsize the sovereign model, will be officially dead…which will upset no one outside Meta.
