Meta is moving forward with stablecoin payments across its apps, according to a report from CoinDesk. The company has issued requests for proposals to third-party providers and aims to launch the feature in the second half of 2026, including a new wallet for handling dollar-pegged tokens on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Stripe looks like the top contender for the initial rollout, following its purchase of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge and with its CEO Patrick Collison now on Meta’s board.
This effort follows Meta’s infamous attempt at building its own digital currency roughly seven years ago. The company unveiled the Libra project in 2019 before rebranding it Diem. Regulators and lawmakers opposed the plan, citing fears that it would hand Meta excessive control over a global payment system and potentially weaken the U.S. dollar’s position worldwide. Some also flagged risks of money laundering and illicit finance on the network.
According to a previous Financial Times report, Federal Reserve officials applied direct pressure on those involved with Meta’s digital currency initiative. After a June 24, 2021, breakfast meeting between Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Fed General Counsel Mark Van Der Weide placed calls to Diem CEO Stuart Levey and banking partners including Silvergate. The night before the scheduled June 29 pilot launch of a U.S. dollar version, he delivered the same scripted message: the government could not stop the project but was uncomfortable allowing it to proceed without a full stablecoin regulatory framework, especially given the coin’s potential to scale massively. Diem eventually shut down in January 2022.
How Libra Was Killed.
I never shared this publicly before, but since @pmarca opened the floodgates on @joerogan’s pod, it feels appropriate to shed more light on this.
As a reminder, Libra (then Diem) was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a…
— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) November 30, 2024
Meta is taking a different route this time to limit regulatory exposure. Instead of issuing its own token, it will rely entirely on an established third-party stablecoin provider. “They want to do this, but at arm’s length,” a source told CoinDesk.
David Marcus, who headed the Libra and Diem teams at Meta, reached his own conclusions from the episode. He left to start Lightspark, which builds tools for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and Spark layer-two protocols. Marcus argues that only a truly decentralized base layer sidesteps the oversight that doomed permissioned projects. “We’ve built the unshakeable conviction at this point that the only blockchain and the only underlying assets that can support a truly open protocol for payments on the internet is Bitcoin and nothing else,” Marcus has previously stated.
That said, from today’s vantage point, Meta’s original push appears to have been ahead of its time. Stablecoins now rank among the most discussed developments in both crypto and traditional finance and stand as the first major blockchain application beyond Bitcoin with genuine everyday use. Companies like Sony, PayPal, Stripe, and many others are all active in the space. However, these tokens operate almost as the mirror image of Bitcoin’s original cypherpunk vision, acting as a traceable, centrally managed and issued digital currencies that give authorities strong monitoring capabilities and backdoors for transaction censorship and asset seizure.
Reported stablecoin adoption numbers also often need adjustment. A McKinsey Financial Services analysis showed that while raw on-chain volumes look large, actual 2025 payment activity using stablecoins totaled roughly $390 billion, which is about 1% of commonly cited figures and just 0.02 percent of all global payments.
The renewed interest from Meta fits the current U.S. regulatory picture. The GENIUS Act, signed into law by President Trump on July 18, 2025, established the first federal framework for payment stablecoins. It limits issuance to permitted banks or licensed entities, requires one-to-one backing with U.S. dollars or similarly liquid assets such as short-term Treasuries, and mandates monthly public reserve attestations plus anti-money laundering compliance.
That said, a stablecoin issued by a Trump-affiliated crypto venture is also at the center of “unprecedented corruption” allegations levied at the current president.
These modern, fully regulated stablecoins fall short of Diem’s original scope. Strict reserve rules and increasing centralization in the associated tech stack make them resemble traditional fintech products more than an independent digital currency that could compete with fiat currencies on a global scale. In other words, the more interesting versions of new digital currencies backed by bitcoin as a key reserve asset will remain offshore for now, as indicated by Tether’s launch of a U.S.-specific stablecoin offering earlier this year.
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