Libra Rebrands to Become ‘Diem’

The Libra Association has rebranded itself as the Diem Association, its payment service operator will be called Diem Networks and its currency the Diem Dollar. Its Calibra blockchain group, responsible for the digital wallet that will hold the Diem Dollar, has already been renamed Novi.

The original goal was to have a 100-organisation association, but this objective has been abandoned and it currently has 27 members. It is worth mentioning that the original members included the likes of Visa, MasterCard, Stripe and PayPal, big payment players. They are gone, replaced by non-traditional financial partners and innovators, Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Shopify etc.

The original scheme was criticised by regulators for its impact on financial stability, privacy and money laundering concerns and more. It had been going to launch a stablecoin ‘currency’ backed by a basket of currencies, but this has been scaled back to being a single stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.