Twitter founder and now Block CEO Jack Dorsey criticized the failed Meta cryptocurrency project, Diem.
According to Dorsey, Diem is not very attractive because the company led by Mark Zuckerberg is too focused on inviting Diem users into the Meta product line such as WhatsApp and Instagram.
"They're trying to create a currency that's owned by Facebook -- probably for a good and honest reason -- but there's also another reason that suggests they're trying to get more people into the Facebook ecosystem," Dorsey said.
"They prefer it over using an open and standard protocol like Bitcoin," he added while speaking at the MicroStrategy World conference, as quoted by us from Bloomberg, Wednesday (2/2/2022).
According to him, this is a waste of time and energy, because they could actually make Bitcoin more accessible to more people around the world.
"Two or three years, or however long (Facebook developed Diem which was formerly called Libra), could have been spent making Bitcoin more accessible from around the world, which would benefit Messenger and Instagram as well as WhatsApp products," explains Dorsey.
Meta started the Diem project in mid-2019 with a consortium of global technology and financial companies. The hope is that Diem can become a competitor to Bitcoin and other currencies.
The main idea is to create something that can be sent instantly between users, even from different countries. Even Diem was separated into an institution outside of Meta, which means that Meta no longer controls the currency.
However, the big name Meta still haunts Diem, and not in a good connotation. Because Meta is considered a company that is too big and dangerous, Diem's presence is considered to strengthen its position.
As a result, the regulators continued to suppress the emergence of Diem, until they finally sold their assets to Silvergate.