Bitcoin Poised To Top $1.5 Million, Says Ex-PayPal President

In a wide-ranging Coin Stories interview printed October 21, David Marcus—co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, former president of PayPal and co-creator of Diem, the cryptocurrency challenge initiated by Facebook—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 Could Reach $1.5 Million

“I feel Bitcoin shall be extra useful than gold,” Marcus told host Natalie Brunell. “At at the moment’s gold value, it’s, , $1.3 million a bitcoin that [it] may have a better market cap than gold.” He emphasised he’s “first rate at directional predictions” however “horrible at timing,” framing the trajectory as inevitable over a five-to-ten-year horizon reasonably than a near-dated name. The implication of outgrowing gold’s market capitalization locations Bitcoin’s potential worth properly 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 rivalry that BTC should progress past a slender “digital gold” narrative. Echoing a line from analyst Matt Pines that Brunell cited—“if Bitcoin is barely a retailer of worth, it has failed”—Marcus agreed “absolutely,” however added a vital caveat: the savings-asset part was a crucial precondition for utility.

“We consider that the store-of-value part is completely important for us to have the ability to truly construct a utility part of Bitcoin on high 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, Fidelity or others, are literally supporting Bitcoin… we will truly actually begin constructing cost utility on high of it.”

That utility imaginative and prescient hinges on utilizing Bitcoin extra like TCP/IP—an invisible settlement substrate—than as a unstable unit of account for on a regular basis spending. Marcus was blunt about behavioral and financial constraints: “People don’t need to use Bitcoin for on a regular basis purchases as a result of it’s unstable and folks need to truly profit from appreciation… they don’t need to be the Bitcoin pizza guy.”

Lightspark’s method is to maneuver fiat end-to-end whereas utilizing BTC within the center. “You can ship {dollars} from a US checking account to somebody in Mexico receiving Mexican peso… the settlement asset is Bitcoin in between. So you’ve gotten {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 trust model and pace, however highlighted its liquidity and self-custody frictions when scaled to “billions of endpoints.”

The firm’s newly launched “Spark” is described as a Lightning-compatible, non-channel cost 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 consider it’s trustless sufficient and has unilateral exits to Layer 1… you may pull a rip wire and nobody can forestall 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 trying 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. “This is a room that historically would have been very proof against Bitcoin… now the instances have modified so profoundly.” Yet he nonetheless framed retail penetration as early, estimating “low a whole lot of hundreds of thousands” of distinctive holders globally and vital headroom from there.

Overall, Marcus’ thesis returns to first ideas: 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 can’t do 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 useful than gold,” which at the moment maps to $1.5 million.

At press time, BTC traded at $109,060.