- David Marcus made revelations about Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Bitcoin
- The creator of Facebook “appreciates Bitcoin,” he said
- Zuckerberg said in 2021 that he had a goat named Bitcoin
- Marcus, who previously worked at PayPal and Meta, explained why he is now a Bitcoin advocate
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is familiar with Bitcoin and is apparently sympathetic to the leading cryptocurrency.
In a stunning revelation made by former Meta executive David Marcus during a recent appearance, it was suggested that the social media giant’s CEO has a bullish view on Bitcoin.
Speaking on the “ What Bitcoin Did ” podcast with Peter McCormack, Marcus, who previously ran Facebook‘s cryptocurrency project, shared his own perspective on digital assets and revealed some of Zuckerberg’s own vision by answering affirmatively to his question. interlocutor: “ Is Zuckerberg a bitcoiner? “.
“Yes, yes, yes. He appreciates Bitcoin,” Marcus replied, adding that the two had “ many conversations ” on the topic of decentralized digital currencies when the company was developing the Libra project. “ Especially when I was struggling to see how we can decentralize this enough […] and the tension was between full decentralization and the reality of scalability issues, and then the volatility that we would have to face.”
Zuckerberg and Bitcoin
Zuckerberg, unlike other well-known millionaires, has never been one to defend Bitcoin publicly. In fact, he has always kept his opinion on the matter secretive. However, in the past he has given some hints that he might be at least interested in the new asset class and its underlying technology.
Before renaming his company Meta, Zuckerberg was leading efforts for Facebook to have its own digital currency. The cryptocurrency project was initially announced in 2019 under the name ‘ Libra ‘ and was later rebranded to ‘ Diem ‘ amid scrutiny from regulators around the world.
Although the founder personally attended the US Congress to advocate for the project, the efforts were unsuccessful and the project was eventually shelved. In early 2022, Meta confirmed that he had left Diem behind for good.
But beyond his company’s ambitions, Zuckerberg has shed other clues about his interest in cryptocurrencies. In 2021, he took to Facebook to introduce the world to his two goats: “Max” and “Bitcoin.” The name of the mascots generated a stir within the industry, motivating all kinds of theories and speculations around the millionaire’s endorsement.
Among the comments, some followers suspected at the time that the goat names were an encrypted message and that Zuckerberg was actually trying to say that he is a Bitcoin maximalist. The creator of Facebook never confirmed this hypothesis, but the theories continued to circulate for a while.
David Marcus is a Bitcoin advocate
During the podcast, Marcus also talked about his personal view of Bitcoin. The businessman, who was previously president of PayPal and spent several years at Meta, said that the work around the Libra project and having faced first-hand the challenges of the financial sector, changed his perspective on Bitcoin, leading him to recognize the enormous potential of said currency.
“A lot can be theorized about the experience we have had, but having lived through it has changed my worldview and my appreciation in such a way that I now have the unwavering conviction that Bitcoin is the only form of internet-neutral money that will ever exist,” commented on the efforts on Facebook‘s cryptocurrency project.
It’s one thing to say it because you have laser eyes, and it’s another thing to come to that conclusion after trying for the right reason — I think for the right reason — to build a technology that would scale to billions of people and that can provide a stable form of money. digital that could travel in this new scalable payment system.
“Then you realize that private companies issuing a new unit of money, anything that can have that type of distribution, is problematic,” he added.
In May 2022, shortly after leaving his role at Meta, Marcus became the co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, a startup focused on Bitcoin for fast transactions. The company leverages the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 payments protocol that enables fast and affordable transactions on the Bitcoin network, to provide more efficient financial services.
Last month, in an interview for CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Marcus spoke about his startup’s efforts and claimed that Bitcoin has the potential to revolutionize the entire payment system around the world due to its robustness and decentralized nature.
“I have come to the conclusion that if we want a truly open and interoperable protocol for making money on the Internet, which is what we are trying to help build here, it has to be based on something that literally no one controls.”
