David Marcus to leave Meta

The head of Meta’s payments division (formerly Facebook) David Marcus announced that he would leave the company by the end of 2021. His place will be taken by former Upwork CEO Stefan Kasriel.

Personal news: after a fulfilling seven years at Meta, I’ve made the difficult decision to step down and leave the company at the end of this year. (1/7)

— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) November 30, 2021

Marcus did not specify what prompted the departure. He also declined to outline his future plans, but hinted that it could be “something new and exciting”.

I now look forward to having more free time in the months to come before I start building something new and exciting again. Onward! (7/7)

— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) November 30, 2021

David Marcus joined Facebook in 2014 after two years leading PayPal. He initially held a vice-president role and led the Messenger division.

In 2018 Marcus headed the new blockchain research group. In 2019 he led the Libra project.

The publication of the white paper for Facebook’s digital currency sparked a wave of regulator backlash around the world. The European Central Bank saw Libra as a threat to fiat currencies.

On 1 December 2020, the Libra Association renamed itself to the Diem Association. Previously the project abandoned the original concept of a global stablecoin in favour of several stablecoins, each pegged to different fiat currencies.

This was followed by departures of several prominent Libra Association members, including PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, eBay, Booking Holdings and Vodafone, who cited regulatory risks.

Facebook also carried out a rebranding of the Libra wallet, renaming it from Calibra to Novi.

In August 2021, Marcus said the digital wallet was ready for launch. It later emerged that the bitcoin exchange Coinbase would serve as the custodial partner in the pilot testing of Novi.

Earlier, Kevin Weil, one of the Diem co-founders, left the company Kevin Weil and project co-founder Morgan Beller.

Back in October, Facebook carried out a major rebrand — the company is now called Meta. Mark Zuckerberg called the metaverse ‘the next stage in the evolution of social connections’.

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