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With help from Steven Overly, Rebecca Rainey, Leonie Cater, Elisa Braun and Mark Scott
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Diem and the economy
January 3, 2021
The Facebook Diem is a cryptocurrency that Facebook announced on June 18, 2019. The project was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but its creators are actually Morgan Beller (staff at Facebook blockchain division), David Marcus and Kevin Weil (Novi’s Vice President of product).
The original plan for the proposed cryptocurrency was to create a stable coin that would be backed by a basket of assets (currencies like the Euro, Singapore dollar, US dollar, Pound sterling), but in November 2020, according to a report by The Financial Times, Facebook announced that it would be launching the project with a slimmed-down plan that includes the currency being backed one-for-one by the US dollar as opposed to its original plan to back it up against major currencies.