(Reuters) – Silvergate Capital Corp said on Monday it has agreed to buy Blockchain Payments Network and other intellectual property assets from Meta Platforms Inc’s digital currency venture Diem Association.
Diem said in a separate statement it is shutting down operations with the asset sale.
Meta, formerly Facebook Inc, first unveiled plans for Diem, formerly known as Libra, in June 2019, as part of an effort to expand beyond social networking into e-commerce and global payments.
The project immediately ran into fierce opposition from policymakers globally and in the quest for regulatory approvals, Facebook then renamed its digital coin to Diem and scaled down its global ambition to focus on the United States.
Silvergate issued 1.3 million shares of stock to Diem and paid $50 million in cash for the assets, according to its statement.
(Reporting by Nitin Narain and Ann Maria Shibu in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates)
