Novi, the Meta crypto wallet, will disappear

Meta will close its Novi crypto wallet on September 1st, but this is far from the end of Meta in the web3 space.

Meta has taken the decision to shut down Novi, its digital wallet for cryptocurrencies. After all, he wouldn’t have lived very long. From a note discovered by Bloomberg, we learn that the Menlo Park firm has announced that it is going to end the platform on September 1st. July 20 will also be the last day for deposits. Meta advises users to withdraw their funds “as soon as possible”, saying it will “attempt to transfer”the remaining money to customers’ bank accounts after Novi’s last day of operation.

Meta will close its Novi crypto wallet on September 1

For now, this shutdown marks the end of Meta’s ambitions for cryptocurrencies. The American giant launched Novi’s “small pilot program”last October. The wallet was launched without the support of Diem, Meta’s own cryptocurrency, formerly known as Libra. A month later, David Markus, the company’s chief crypto officer, left Meta. In early 2022, the Diem Association announced that it was selling its assets and “downsizing”its activities.

But this is far from the end of the meta in the web3 space.

But the disappearance of Novi and Diem doesn’t mean that Meta won’t offer another digital wallet. “We are already working to leverage all these years of building the power of the Meta blockchain to introduce new products such as digital assets,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Expect more from us in the web3 space because we are very optimistic about the benefits these technologies can bring to people and companies in the metaverse.”

Last month, Menlo Park announced that Facebook Pay was being renamed to Meta Pay. At the time, Mark Zuckerberg called this change “the first step”towards creating a digital wallet for the metaverse. The multibillionaire also said he sees a future where Meta Pay functions as a place to store all the digital items you buy or create in virtual worlds.