Facebook Loses DIEM Project VP to Crypto Payment Firm Circle

Facebook Loses DIEM Project VP to Crypto Payment Firm Circle (1)

Circle, the Blockchain-based payment service company behind the USDC Stablecoin has successfully snagged Dante Disparte, the former Crypto-Project VP at Facebook. The company took to its official website to announce the arrival of Disparte, who will now serve as its new Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Global Policy.

The CEO of Circle who authored the blogpost expressed excitement with the company’s decision to bring Disparte on board, as it hopes to benefit from his wealth of experience in the cryptocurrency industry.

Part of the blogpost reads;

“It’s with this backdrop that I am thrilled to welcome Dante Disparte as Circle’s Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy. Dante brings decades of experience working on complex global financial and risk issues, and most recently served as Executive Vice President at Diem Association, spearheading engagement and communications with government and financial industry leaders around the world.” 

Just like Jeremy Allaire noted, Disparte had been appointed as the Executive Vice President of the Diem Association. Diem was born from what was formerly known as Libra, following Facebook’s decision to pull through with a rebrand. Post-rebrand, Diem boasted of 27 members, including digital wallet provider Novi, as well as Facebook.

Disparte is not the first high profiled member to leave Facebook’s Diem. Last month, the firm recorded the departure of Kevin Weil, the former executive leader of Diem, who most notably contributed to the foundation of Facebook’s Libra. 

In the past, Weil who had dropped out of his ph.D program in the university to work with Twitter in 2009, had been credited with the upsurge in Instagram’s ad increase and user count, after the social media app was bought by Facebook in 2012. Weil who said he still believed in the mission of Diem has gone on to work with the Satellite firm Planetslab, as President, product, and business. 

Facebook has dealt with blows of the same kinds in previous times. Coupled with the departure of individual members of its board, the payment giants that the company had planned to build Libra around —Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, Stripe— had quickly closed the curtains following the intense controversial attention that came from the government and other regulatory bodies.

The future of Diem is not all bleak after all. With the presence of Uber and Coinbase, both of which reportedly played a role in launching a testnet that has recorded over $50 million in transactions, there’s every reason to be hopeful that the currency could come to life sooner than later.