With an ultimate goal to be the go-to currency for the global financial system, it was, in hindsight, too ambitious, Marcus admits now. "If you're dependent on one centralized stablecoin to do global payments, it's a problem as we've experienced firsthand," he said. Why Meta's crypto project failedIn 2019 Meta unveiled plans to create a digital currency pegged to hard currencies including the US dollar. With his new startup, Lightspark, Marcus plans to hypercharge the global payments system is simpler, or at least less grandiose. Users will swap their local currency for bitcoin and then have it converted to the local currency of whichever country the capital is needed in.

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Persons: David Marcus, Meta's, Libra, Diem, Marcus, Meta, that's, Mark Zuckerberg, he's, Christian Catalini, Marcus's, Catalini Organizations: PayPal, Visa, Securities and Exchange Commission, Meta, bitcoin, Facebook, JPMorgan, Bloomberg Locations: Manhattan, Los Angeles, Bahrain