By the end of 2021, David Marcus, the chief executive officer of Meta’s cryptocurrency and fintech business Novi, will step down.
Stephane Kasriel, the former CEO of Upwork who has been at Meta — formerly known as Facebook since August 2020 — will succeed Marcus.
A tough decision
Marcus revealed his decision in a tweet on December 1, saying he had made the “tough decision” to depart the organization before the end of the year.
The executive didn’t elaborate on his next move but hinted that it could be something “fresh and interesting” that he creates himself.
“While there’s still a lot to do just a few months after launching Novi — and I’m still as impassioned as ever about the need for change in our payments and banking systems — my entrepreneurial DNA has been nagging me for too many mornings to ignore,” Marcus said.
Marcus has been with the company since 2014, starting out in the messenger service branch before focusing on financial services in 2018 by co-founding Meta’s digital wallet Novi (which shares the same name as the fintech unit) and the troubled Diem stablecoin project, which now operates independently.
Moving on
Marcus follows a long list of previous executives from Facebook’s crypto operation who have left in the last year, including Diem co-founders Morgan Beller and Kevin Weil, who have both moved on to new jobs at NFX and Planet, respectively.
Because of their ties to Facebook, Novi and Diem have been scrutinized by local and international regulators, and neither project has yet to completely debut within that time limit.
Just hours after Novi started a test in the United States and Guatemala in cooperation with Coinbase, a group of US senators, including crypto skeptic Elizabeth Warren, addressed a letter to Facebook urging the company to abandon its wallet project.
Marcus reminisced on his tenure at Novi and claimed that his finest success was establishing a “kickass squad” during the past three years.
Image courtesy of Cointelegraph News/YouTube