A survey of 1,000 United States consumers around growing interest in the metaverse has revealed some interesting results. In a survey commissioned by nonfungible token and metaverse infrastructure provider Advokate Group, 87% of respondents preferred a decentralized metaverse on a blockchain over some of the mega projects planned by tech giants. This became more evident when 77% of the respondents shared concerns over Facebook’s entry into the metaverse, especially since it owns users' metaverse data. Facebook’s tainted past with mismanagement of private user data has already dismantled its early plans of launching a stablecoin called Diem. The stablecoin project faced …

Australia's consumer and competition (ACCC) watchdog is investigating Facebook’s parent company Meta for a long running series of fraudulent cryptocurrency advertisements of the platform. The news comes just a day after Cointelegraph reported that billionaire businessman Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest was pursuing criminal action against the social media giant for allegedly serving users crypto scam ads and fake articles which used his name and likeness. Numerous other high profile celebrities from Hugh Jackman to Nicole Kidman have been fraudulently employed to draw users into investment scams. The ACCC alleges that Meta allowed the crypto scammers to breach Australian consumer law, defrauding …

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, saw the largest single-day slide in market value for a U.S. company ever with a 26% fall in share prices on Thursday after the tech giant revealed disappointing earnings and a decline in daily active users. Meta famously changed its name from Facebook in late 2021, to signal its plans to focus on the Metaverse, and its struggles have coincided with double-digit percentage gains for its decentralized competitors The Sandbox and Decentraland. Meta reported $33.67 billion worth of total revenue for Q4 2021, compared to $28 billion the year prior. However, its net …

On Jan. 31, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced that it was pulling from its stablecoin project, Diem, formerly known as Libra. Intellectual property and other assets related to the operations of the Diem Payment Network were to be sold to Silvergate Capital Corporation, essentially meaning the end to Mark Zuckerberg and his corporations’ stablecoin aspirations, at least in their current shape. This also marks the end of a once-groundbreaking initiative that was revealed in 2019 with a promise to bring a global alternative to fiat money to Facebook’s 2-billion-strong user base. Here is how this plan went from the …

Shortly after Meta, formerly Facebook, officially gave up on its stablecoin Diem, some of the key people in the project have become increasingly vocal about the uncensorable nature of Bitcoin (BTC). David Marcus, a co-founder of Diem, originally known as Libra, took to Twitter on Tuesday to predict that Bitcoin will be the number one asset in the next two decades. It’s become clear to me that #Bitcoin will be the one asset and L1 still around in 20+ years with increased compounding relevance over time. The #2 slot (for a different use case) is still tbd. #Ethereum is in …

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said that Meta’s failed cryptocurrency project Diem was “wasted effort and time,” and it should have focused its efforts on “making Bitcoin more accessible for everyone.” MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor interviewed Dorsey on Tuesday at his company’s “Bitcoin for Corporations 2022” conference about how corporations could integrate and use Bitcoin (BTC). Dorsey said that although Facebook probably started Diem for “the right reasons,” it should’ve used an open-ended protocol like Bitcoin rather than attempting to create its own currency. “This whole thing with Libra and then Diem, I think there’s a ton of lessons there,” Dorsey …

Meta, formerly branded as Facebook, has officially announced the closure of its digital currency project Diem after years of major efforts to move forward with the initiative. Announcing the news on Monday, Diem CEO Stuart Levey confirmed that Meta is selling intellectual property and other assets related to the Diem stablecoin project to its Silvergate Capital Corporation. The Diem Association and its subsidiaries will start winding down operations “over the coming weeks,” Levey said. The association, however, is still confident that Diem’s ideals will continue to thrive even after Meta officially terminated its involvement in the project, the CEO noted: …

An exchange-traded fund linked to companies involved with the Metaverse launched on the Cboe BZX Exchange — shorting shares of Facebook’s parent company, Meta. The Subversive Metaverse ETF, listed under the ticker PUNK, opened for trading at $25.15 on Thursday. The fund’s holdings include shares of Block — formerly Square — Google’s parent company Alphabet, Microsoft, Sony, GPU manufacturer Nvidia, Coinbase Global, Galaxy Digital and online gaming platform Roblox. However, exposure to Meta — one of the largest tech firms in the world, with a $837 market capitalization — was conspicuously absent from PUNK’s top holdings. $PUNK https://t.co/nBYPFrIKo8 pic.twitter.com/jAB2APsML9 — …

Meta-backed crypto initiative “Diem” is reportedly trying to sell its assets, seemingly calling time on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s grand ambitions for a stablecoin to act as the internet’s currency. Diem — which was previously known as Libra — is Meta Platform’s cryptocurrency initiative. According to insider sources speaking with Bloomberg, it is considering selling assets to return capital to its investors. The sources said that Diem is in discussions with investment bankers to determine the best way to sell its intellectual property and cash out on whatever value the project has maintained. It’s unclear how the company will be …

Facebook’s parent company Meta says that its newly-created artificial intelligence (AI) “Research SuperCluster” (RSC) will “pave the way” towards building the Metaverse. The social media giant said that it believes RSC is already one of the fastest supercomputers in the world and will snag the top spot when it’s fully operational in mid-2022, according to a Jan, 24 blog post unveiling the hardware. “Developing the next generation of advanced AI will require powerful new computers capable of quintillions of operations per second,” wrote the company. “Ultimately, the work done with RSC will pave the way toward building technologies for the …

Multinational tech conglomerate Meta is reportedly diving into nonfungible tokens (NFTs) by integrating a feature that will let users show off their NFTs on their Facebook and Instagram profiles. According to the report, Meta is currently working on prototypes that will allow users to mint collectible tokens. Meta is also discussing potentially launching a marketplace that allows the buying and selling of NFTs. However, while the news may excite millions of NFT enthusiasts that use social media, all of the projects are within the earliest stages and may still change accordingly. The discussions follow a push to onboard more staff …

Employees from Microsoft and Apple are jumping ship to join Meta Platforms as the company sets its sights on creating the Metaverse. According to former employees of Microsoft quoted by the Wall Street Journal, around 100 people have ditched the tech giant’s augmented reality team over the past year to join Meta Platforms. They claim that Meta has been particularly focused on snapping up people who have worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality (AR) headsets. According to the WSJ, Linkedin profiles show that more than 70 people who were part of Microsoft’s HoloLens team have left the project over the …