David L Marcus

After seven years in various executive roles, David Marcus departed Facebook’s parent company Meta at the end of 2021, following his time as co-creator of the social media giant’s heavily-scrutinized (and now defunct) Diem digital currency project. The early Bitcoin proponent joined Facebook as head of its Messaging app before migrating to crypto initiatives; prior to Facebook, Marcus had served as PayPal’s president. At the time of his Facebook resignation, Marcus hinted that he planned to forgo another corporate role in order to pursue entrepreneurial ventures. And it would appear those upcoming ventures may be based in or near Los Angeles. As the former president of PayPal, Marcus has a lot of payments expertise and has been in charge of Messenger through a lot of significant changes over the years. In fact, Facebook’s decision to split Messenger out of the core app so that users had to download the standalone app in order to receive messages on mobile happened during Marcus’s first month on the job. He oversaw Messenger’s push into customer service bots, shopping and, more recently, advertising. His departure from that role is notable, especially since Messenger is just starting to ramp up its advertising business. Facebook’s decision to pursue blockchain technology will most certainly add some validity to the crypto industry, which has been very chaotic. This doesn’t mean that Facebook will build its own cryptocurrency, but there are many ways that blockchain technology could be used that have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies, including encrypted data storage. Marcus does have a personal interest in cryptocurrencies, though. He joined the board of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase in December.