Diem (formerly known as Libra) was a permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin payment system proposed by the American social media company Facebook.

[5] The project, currency and transactions would have been managed and cryptographically entrusted to the Diem Association, a membership organization of companies from payment, technology, telecommunication, online marketplace and venture capital, and nonprofits.

[19] On September 18, 2019, during a meeting with top Senate Democratic leaders, Mark Zuckerberg said that Libra would not be launched anywhere in the world without first obtaining approval from United States regulators.

[24] According to a November 2020 report in the Financial Times, Libra would be launching a slimmed down plan that included the cryptocurrency being a stablecoin backed by the US dollar rather than a multiple currency collection.

[26][27] Facebook was also reported to have planned to launch the token in the U.S. with it being issued by Silvergate, although the Federal Reserve and the United States Department of the Treasury were not supportive of the project.

[31] The plan was for the Libra token to be backed by financial assets such as a basket of currencies,[32] and US Treasury securities in an attempt to avoid volatility.

[33] Facebook announced that each of the partners would inject an initial US$10 million, so Libra had full asset backing on the day it opened.

[41] On April 16, 2020, Libra announced plans to create an infrastructure for multiple cryptocurrencies, the preponderance of which would be backed by individual fiat currencies, and said the association was in talks with regulators from Switzerland for a payments license.

[42] In May 2021, Diem announced that it had withdrawn its application to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority and said that it would instead seek approval with the US treasury to register as a money services business.

[61] Bank of England governor Mark Carney said there was a need to keep an "open mind" about new technology for money transfers, but "anything that works in this world will become instantly systemic and will have to be subject to the highest standards of regulation.

He also spoke about the potential for abuse of marketing dominance and systemic financial risks as reasons for not allowing stablecoins to operate yet within the EU.

[67] In addition, Dombrovskis stated in his address that stablecoins that function on a global scale can "present new concerns" — they can disturb financial and monetary stability.

[68] The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Democrats sent a letter to Facebook asking the company to stop development of Libra, citing concerns of privacy, national security, trading, and monetary policy.

[69] Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress on 10 July 2019 that the Fed had "serious concerns" as to how Libra would deal with "money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.

"[71] US regulators contacted Visa, PayPal, Mastercard and Stripe, asking for a complete overview of how Libra would fit into their anti-money-laundering compliance programs.

[54] According to CNBC, in 2021, Diem reportedly withdrawn its application for a Swiss payment license, intending to instead move its activities to the United States.

Diem announced that it would relocate its operating headquarters from Geneva to Washington with an intend to establish its payment system in the United States.

[75] The working group would coordinate measures to handle Libra's influence on regulation, monetary policy, tax, and payments settlement.

[36] In August 2019, according to CNBC, top data protection officials including Democratic FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra, U.K. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, EU Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli, and other top regulators from Australia, Canada, Albania, and Burkina Faso in a joint statement expressed doubts over Facebook's proposed digital currency project Libra (Diem).

[84] In general, consumer advocates and public interest groups have opposed Diem on privacy grounds and rejected the tethering of financial services to mass surveillance.

[90] A settlement conference in this matter was scheduled for March 26, 2020 in the United States Courthouse, while the parties did not consent to conducting the proceedings before a magistrate judge and requested to be tried to a jury.

In June 2019, Elaine Ou, an opinion writer at Bloomberg News, tried compiling and running the publicly released code for Libra.

At the time, the software did little more than allow fake coins to be put in a wallet; almost none of the functionality outlined in the white paper was implemented, including "major architectural features that have yet to be invented."

[5] In June 2019, Facebook announced plans to release a digital wallet called Calibra in 2020, as a standalone app and also to integrate it within Messenger and WhatsApp.