The last remnants of Facebook’s crypto project will be closed on 1 September

Meta plans to close its digital Novi wallet on September 1, just eleven months after the company formerly known as Facebook launched it.

The company announced the upcoming closure on Novi’s website, informing customers that “the Novi pilot will end soon” and will no longer be available for use after that date.

Meta said that Novi users should withdraw the remaining balance of their Novi accounts before the closing date. People can either transfer the remaining balance to their bank account or withdraw the digital funds as cash where appropriate, the company said.

Novi users will not be able to access their accounts after September 1, which means they will not be able to retrieve account information such as transaction history.

The company released Novi in ​​October last year in a so-called beta or test version using the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Coinbase acted as Meta’s “depository partner” in the project, providing digital storage and security technologies to help the Novi app secure people’s funds, the crypto exchange said in a blog post for the company in October.

At the time, Meta Novi presented as an easy way for people to send and receive money using the cryptocurrency Paxos Dollar, or USDP, stablecoin. At one point, Meta planned to issue and accept the Diem cryptocurrency, which was supported by a Facebook-led association, in connection with the Novi wallet.

However, the Diem cryptocurrency project, overseen by the Meta-backed Diem Association, met with intense scrutiny from regulators, which led to its demise. The leader of the project, David Marcus, announced his departure from Facebook in November last year. In January, the cryptocurrency-focused Silvergate bank acquired all Diem-related intellectual property and assets from the Diem Association, a major setback for Meta.

“Despite the fact that we have given positive feedback on the design of the network, it became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not go ahead,” Diem CEO Stuart Levey said in a statement at the time. “As a result, the best way forward was to sell Diem Group’s assets, as we have done today to Silvergate.”

Since then, stack coins have been under intense scrutiny amid a broader downturn in the cryptocurrency market. The collapse of UST in May, which lost its bond to the dollar, worried investors and regulators that certain types of stack coins may not have the necessary support to redeem them in the event of a race.

Meta shares were flat after trading at $ 160.00.