On December 2, news broke that David Marcus, co-founder of Diem (formerly Libra), stated on social media that by spring 2021, Diem had resolved all possible regulatory issues related to financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, and reserve management, and was ready to launch. However, at that time, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that allowing the project to proceed would be 'political suicide.' Subsequently, the Federal Reserve held meetings to inform several banks that they were 'unwilling' to allow banks to participate in the project, and Libra was effectively sentenced to death at that time. David Marcus stated that the government or regulatory agencies did not terminate the project from any legal or regulatory perspective. This was a 100% political suffocation—executed through intimidation of captured banking institutions. For him personally, the most difficult aspect to accept was not the failure, but that such a thing could happen in the United States.