Former Facebook executive: BTC will lead the world out of the era of fax payments

Compiled by: Blockchain Knight

David Marcus, the former head of Facebook’s payment department, said that BTC will become the most critical network leading payments into a new era. He also stated that the global payment infrastructure is outdated and will benefit from integration with Crypto assets in the future.

In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, the former Facebook and PayPal executive talked about his new project, Lightspak. The company was established to provide a second-layer BTC solution, payment settlement services for the Lightning Network.

This payment solution allows users to send funds “off-chain,” increasing the scalability of the BTC network. In this sense, Marcus and his company want to turn Crypto assets into a “truly global payments network.”

Their goal is to connect everyone financially, regardless of nationality, access to traditional payment channels, and other factors. The former executive also claimed that this would allow people to connect just like they would using email, text messaging and other communication methods supported by the internet.

When talking about the problems the company wants to solve and why it wants to build on the BTC network, Marcus expressed the following views:

“If you stop one of them (tourists visiting the United States) and want to communicate with them, you can ask them for their email address and the next minute you can easily email them. You can send them Text messaging, you can hang out with them, but if you’re sending them money, you can’t do that. So we’re still in the age of fax payments, and that’s what we’re trying to solve."

Marcus believes** that the world lacks a universal currency protocol, and BTC and Lightning Network are the solution**. The current payment system is complex and people must overcome numerous obstacles to transfer money between countries or each other.

If Lightspark and other Lightning Network-based companies can provide a simple solution to the public, they have a chance to enter a trillion-dollar space and take market share from SWIFT and other international payment networks.

While BTC has been in a downward trend since reaching an all-time high of $69,000 in 2021, the Lightning Network has been growing. Data from Crypto asset analysis platform mempool.space shows that the payment capacity of second-tier solutions has increased to more than 4,700 BTC.

The chart above shows that this metric has been rising since October 2020, when affordability was well below 1,000 BTC. If this trend continues, the payment power of the Lightning Network may double in the next two years.