The co-creator of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project Diem is now planning to lead the creation of a global payments network using Bitcoin (BTC).
In a new interview on CNBC Squawk Box, David Marcus, who is the co-founder and CEO at Lightspark, says that his Bitcoin-based payments startup building on the Lighting Network is attempting to create a low-cost universal payment service.
“Our view is actually that Bitcoin is not the currency that people will use to buy things, but a fragment of a Bitcoin on top of Lightning is like a small data packet on the internet – only for value. And so you can exchange at the edges of the network and send dollars to someone who will receive Japanese yen on the other side, or send dollars to someone who will receive euros on the other side. And the actual net settlement layer that is used is Bitcoin, Lightning and it settles in real time, cash final and at a very, very low cost.”
The Lightning Network is a scaling solution that aims to enable instant and cost-effective transactions with BTC.
Marcus says that Lightspark hopes to build a payments system that could be used as easily as sending someone a text message or an email.
“What we’re trying to do is turn Bitcoin into a real global payment network… We have many tourists walking right outside of the studio right now [and] if you were to stop one of them, wanting to communicate with them you could ask them for an email address and you can email them easily the next minute. You could text them. You could add them to a group video chat. You can do all of these things.
But if you were to send them money, if they were not a US citizen here in the US using one of the same Fintech apps you’re using then you wouldn’t be able to do that. And so we’re still in the fax era of global payments and that’s what we’re attempting to solve.”
Bitcoin is trading for $25,182 at time of writing, down 2.2% in the last 24 hours.
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