Facebook Rebranded Cryptowallet – Novi – Faces Backlash

[mlawson71]

Facebook announced that they would be launching a pilot of their newly branded Novi cryptocurrency wallet and immediately came under fire from various US lawmakers. The company had partnered with Coinbase to pilot Novi through the exchange’s Coinbase Custdody feature. Shortly after the launch, however, US lawmakers sent a personal letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that read: “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,”
The Facebook-Diem league responded, however, that Diem is not Facebook and that senators and other government officials had apparently greatly misunderstood the relationship between Diem and Facebook, since Diem is an independent organization, and the Diem Association includes Facebook as a major partner among 20 other different partners.
For now Novi continues to exist.
Source
I have always found it fascinating, the kind of pushback Facebook faces every time they mention their crypto projects.

[TomPluz]

There are a good number of politicians who are in the pursuit of not allowing Facebook or any of the entity it is associated with to make a foothold in the cryptocurrency, stablecoin and payment industries and it can be because they are afraid that if allowed to operate freely it would be a lot bigger than its possible competitor and it would be engulfing small players thereby creating another monolith in the process...well just like Facebook is. Still, am wondering, if Facebook has now been stifled to use its right for expansion.