Christian Catalini, co-creator of Facebook’s Libra project, warned on Friday that Stripe’s Tempo and Circle’s Arc could succeed commercially but at the cost of crypto’s decentralization ideal.

Launched in 2019, Libra was Meta’s bold bid to create a global digital currency backed by a basket of stable assets. The project promised to make payments as seamless as messaging, but it triggered immediate backlash from regulators concerned about financial sovereignty, systemic risk, and user privacy. By 2022, Libra — renamed Diem in a bid to reset its image — was shuttered and its assets sold off.

Catalini, who served as Libra’s chief economist, used his Sept. 5 thread on X to revisit the project’s early compromises and explain why they matter now. He said the original open design, developed wit

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