David Marcus, the leader of cryptocurrencies at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, said on Tuesday that he plans to leave his post at the end of the year.
Mr. Marcus worked on many projects while he was at the social media company. He spearheaded Meta's push into a global digital currency that could be used by Facebook and WhatsApp users to transmit payments across borders. The project was renamed Diem after facing some resistance from regulators.
Mr. Marcus said in a series of posts that he was still passionate about the need for change. My entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too long to ignore it.
Mr. Marcus founded Zong, a mobile payments start-up that was acquired by the digital finance giant. He was recruited to lead the Messenger app at Facebook after rising quickly at PayPal.
Mr. Marcus acted as an adviser to companies like Coinbase when he was at Facebook.
He used that knowledge to create a pet project of Meta's chief executive. It was an attempt to make finance more accessible so that people could use Facebook's apps to send cryptocurrencies to one another across the world, which they could eventually exchange for local currency.
The project was halted when a bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned the company's efforts and how much power the social network had over global social media. Mr. Marcus testified about the efforts to Congress, but it did not help the situation.
The company renamed itscryptocurrencies Diem and Novi, and launched a wallet called Novi. The names have been confusing for company executives.
Mr. Marcus didn't say what his future plans would be. People for Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
