In a wide-ranging Coin Tales interview printed October 21, David Marcus—co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, former president of PayPal and co-creator of Diem, the cryptocurrency mission initiated by Fb—laid out a thesis that Bitcoin will finally surpass gold in worth and evolve from a purely “store-of-value” asset into the invisible, impartial settlement layer of the web for cash.
How Bitcoin Might Attain $1.5 Million
“I feel Bitcoin can be extra precious than gold,” Marcus informed host Natalie Brunell. “At at this time’s gold value, it’s, you recognize, $1.3 million a bitcoin that [it] may have the next market cap than gold.” He emphasised he’s “respectable at directional predictions” however “horrible at timing,” framing the trajectory as inevitable over a five-to-ten-year horizon quite than a near-dated name. The implication of outgrowing gold’s market capitalization locations Bitcoin’s potential worth nicely north of $1.3 million per coin and, at Gold’s latest ATH at $4,381.58/oz, above $1.53 million.
Marcus’s value view is inseparable from his broader competition that BTC should progress past a slender “digital gold” narrative. Echoing a line from analyst Matt Pines that Brunell cited—“if Bitcoin is simply a retailer of worth, it has failed”—Marcus agreed “totally,” however added a important caveat: the savings-asset part was a essential precondition for utility.
“We imagine that the store-of-value part is totally important for us to have the ability to truly construct a utility part of Bitcoin on prime of it,” he mentioned, arguing that institutional adoption, ETFs and nation-state accumulation conferred sufficient legitimacy to start scaling real-world funds. “Now that each establishment… whether or not it’s BlackRock, Constancy or others, are literally supporting Bitcoin… we are able to truly actually begin constructing fee utility on prime of it.”
That utility imaginative and prescient hinges on utilizing Bitcoin extra like TCP/IP—an invisible settlement substrate—than as a risky unit of account for on a regular basis spending. Marcus was blunt about behavioral and financial constraints: “Individuals don’t wish to use Bitcoin for on a regular basis purchases as a result of it’s risky and folks wish to truly profit from appreciation… they don’t wish to be the Bitcoin pizza man.”
Lightspark’s method is to maneuver fiat end-to-end whereas utilizing BTC within the center. “You may ship {dollars} from a US checking account to somebody in Mexico receiving Mexican peso… the settlement asset is Bitcoin in between. So you’ve got {dollars}, Bitcoin, Mexican peso and it’s invisible to individuals utilizing it.”
Technically, Lightspark is pushing past Lightning’s channel mannequin whereas remaining backward-compatible. Marcus lauded Lightning’s belief mannequin and pace, however highlighted its liquidity and self-custody frictions when scaled to “billions of endpoints.”
The corporate’s newly launched “Spark” is described as a Lightning-compatible, non-channel fee system that permits spinning up “billions of wallets” with “minimal new belief assumptions.” Crucially, he mentioned, it preserves security valves: “It’s not as trustless as Lightning, however we imagine it’s trustless sufficient and has unilateral exits to Layer 1… you may pull a rip wire and nobody can stop you from recovering your funds on L1.”
Stablecoins And Adoption
Marcus additionally argued that stablecoins—regardless of their centralized issuer mannequin—are an unavoidable part of worldwide funds, and that anchoring them to BTC’s settlement layer enhances resilience. He described a private “schizophrenic journey” with stablecoins, disliking the “single throat to choke,” but accepting their ubiquity and making an attempt to attenuate belief by avoiding separate fuel tokens and preserving unilateral exits to Bitcoin L1.
On adoption, Marcus pointed to shifting institutional sentiment. Recounting a panel in New York “put collectively by Citadel Securities,” he mentioned a “majority” of a roughly 450-person room of enormous traditional-finance buyers indicated they personal BTC, versus far fewer holding ETH, stablecoins, or any token. “It is a room that historically would have been very immune to Bitcoin… now the instances have modified so profoundly.” But he nonetheless framed retail penetration as early, estimating “low a whole bunch of tens of millions” of distinctive holders globally and vital headroom from there.
General, Marcus’ thesis returns to first rules: BTC as impartial, scarce, programmable collateral and a credibly decentralized settlement layer. Dismissing critiques that it lacks “intrinsic worth,” he argued, “Underlying shortage of Bitcoin secured by code is the intrinsic worth… that is the one factor that’s deflationary by nature.”
That, he contends, is why Bitcoin ought to outcompete gold over time: “When the primary gold ETFs have been launched, they began mining extra gold. You may’t try this with Bitcoin.” If and when that market-cap crossover arrives, it could validate the structural name embedded in his remarks—and, by extension, the headline-grabbing notion that BTC’s truthful worth isn’t just above seven figures, however finally “extra precious than gold,” which at this time maps to $1.5 million.
At press time, BTC traded at $109,060.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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