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by schultzie 1084 days ago
> Facebook was all-in on cryptocurrencies. The project is fully gone.

For what it's worth, their cryptocurrency project is absolutely NOT gone. It's gone in the Facebook-ownership sense (in that it was barred from continuing the project by the SEC (?)), but the code and teams are absolutely still iterating on what began at Facebook. Aptos, Sui, and 0L are all projects that have launched to fanfare within the last year.

I'm up for lambasting Facebook as much as the next guy, but I don't think government blocking their projects existence counts as failing.

2 comments

Getting blocked by the government was hardly a black swan event; it was a major risk factor. Facebook absolutely has the lobbyists and political connections to have a good understanding of the risk, as well as have some influence on it.

They got it wrong in this case. It happens, but Facebook doesn't deserve a complete pass for chasing a high profile project that ended up being a dead end for them.

I think a government blocking a project from existing is by definition a failure.

And it also shows that cryptocurrency projects will always be at the mercy of the whims of government(s).

This feature is not unique to cryptocurrency. Governments are our mechanism for deciding what is and is not allowed.
Social media has far more free speech protection. So it’s a good place to be.