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David Marcus, Meta's crypto boss, is leaving

The Great Resignation is hitting tech’s executive suites.

Facebook’s David Marcus
Facebook's David Marcus says it's still committed to Diem.
Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

David Marcus, the leader of Meta’s financial technology unit Novi, will leave his role after seven years with the company, he announced on Twitter Tuesday.

Marcus will leave the company by the end of the year. Stephane Kasriel, a longtime associate of Marcus and former CEO of Upwork who joined Meta in August 2020 as VP of Product for Novi, will take over the position. Kasriel previously worked for Marcus at Zong, a mobile payments startup.

Marcus joined Meta, then Facebook, in 2014 to run its Messenger service, which he turned from an appendage of the main Facebook app into more of a standalone operation. He then formed a team to explore blockchain technologies four years later. His role later expanded to embrace all of Facebook’s payment systems in a unit called Facebook Financial.

In October, Marcus helped debut Novi, Meta’s cryptocurrency wallet, which also became the new name for Facebook Financial.

“While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of launching Novi — and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems — my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it,” Marcus said in a Twitter thread.

The launch of the Novi wallet did not include use of Diem, a stablecoin Marcus helped develop at Facebook that is now overseen by an independent association. Originally known as Libra, Diem drew sharp regulatory scrutiny around the world. The Novi wallet is operating in a limited test in the U.S. and Guatemala and uses USDP, a dollar-linked stablecoin.

Marcus isn’t the only executive whose passion for financial innovation is prompting a career change. On Monday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that he’s stepping down as CEO, a move which will likely free him to focus more on his role as CEO of Square, where he’s pushing several new cryptocurrency initiatives.

Update: An earlier version of this story misstated where Novi is available. It is available in the U.S. and Guatemala.

Nat Rubio-Licht

Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

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