David Marcus, co-creator of Libra for Facebook Inc.
Photographer: Heather Sten for Bloomberg BusinessweekDavid Marcus, Facebook’s Libra Defender
Despite defections, his cryptocurrency project still has the support of 21 organizations and has more than 100 of the social network’s employees working on it.
David Marcus removed his tie, undid the top two buttons of his shirt, and ordered a bourbon. It had been a long week.
Five days earlier, on Oct. 11, Marcus, the executive leading Facebook’s ambitious and controversial foray into cryptocurrencies, had listened as a handful of high-profile partners he’d helped recruit to the project—including Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe—called to say they were dropping out. Then, three days after that, hours before the group was to sign its charter and elect a board of directors to oversee the currency, news broke of another. By the time the group convened later that day, 21 of 28 members remained, among them Uber Technologies, Lyft, and Spotify Technology. “I stopped trying to convince people” not to leave, Marcus says at Succotash, a swanky, Southern-style restaurant in an old bank building in Washington, D.C. “I would have preferred having them. But it’s OK. I think in the long run, they’ll come around.”