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Former Engineers For Facebook's Novi Wallet Join A16z Crypto Team

source-logo  blockster.com 12 October 2021 17:23, UTC

Leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, has taken in top engineers of Facebook's Novi wallet, to work for the company's cryptocurrency arm.

The Chief Operating Officer of az16 crypto, Anthony Albanese, announced the newest additions to the company via a blog post on Monday (October 11, 2021). According to the announcement, Nassim Eddequiouaq will function as the Information Security Officer (CISO), while Riyaz Faizullabhoy, will work ¹¹opas the ChiefTechnology Officer (CTO) for az16 crypto.

Given the expertise of Eddequiouaq and Faizullabhoy, Albanese said that they would

Speaking to CNBC about the latest development, Faizullabhoy said:

A16z has invested in several cryptocurrency and blockchain startups, such as crypto exchange giant Coinbase, decentralized finance (DeFi) project Compound and major decentralized exchange Uniswap.

Back in June, the company launched a cryptocurrency fund with $2.2 billion investment capital. Earlier in October, Andreessen Horowitz made its first investment in an Indian crypto exchange, CoinSwitch.

Before joining a16z, Eddequiouaq and Faizullabhoy were the lead engineers for Facebook's Novi wallet, creating the crypto custody infrastructure for the project. The duo, meanwhile, got their first exposure to cryptocurrency while working at the crypto custody firm Anchorage.

Apart from Eddequiouaq and Faizullabhoy, the Facebook crypto project has also seen the departure of other key people. Morgan Beller, who was one of the co-founders of the Novi payments wallet, who was the project's strategy head, left in September 2020 to join a venture capital firm.

Kevin Weil, another co-founder of Diem and Novi, left Facebook earlier in the year. Even Marc Andreessen, who is one of the co-founders of a16z, worked on the board of the social media giant before starting the venture capital firm in 2009.

Facebook first announced the Libra stablecoin back in 2019. Since the project has undergone some changes in order to please regulators, although, not without losing some original members of the Libra Association, like eBay, Vodafone, PayPal, Stripe, and Mastercard.

Changes carried out so far regarding Facebook's crypto project include alterations to the original Libra whitepaper, rebranding of the digital wallet Calibra to Novi, and the Libra stablecoin changed to Diem.

Meanwhile, according to Albanese, Eddequiouaq's and Faizullabhoy's role at Facebook were "specific", adding that they are going to have a broader impact working with a16z Crypto. In Albanese's words:

blockster.com