In a captivating revelation during the “What Bitcoin Did” podcast with Peter McCormack, David Marcus, the former spearhead of Facebook’s Libra project and now CEO & co-founder of Lightspark, made intriguing comments about Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective on Bitcoin.
Zuckerberg’s Take On Bitcoin
In the exchange between McCormack and Marcus, the former asked, “You might not want to answer, but is Zuck a Bitcoiner?” Marcus affirmed, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. He appreciates Bitcoin but I think we had a lot of conversations about this [Libra], especially when I was struggling to see how we can decentralize this thing enough.”
“Mark Zuckerberg is a bitcoiner”, says former top Facebook executive @DavidMarcus. pic.twitter.com/xTvHgdOD0I
— Documenting ₿itcoin 📄 (@DocumentingBTC) October 11, 2023
However, Marcus quickly steered away from the Bitcoin topic again and elaborated further about Facebook’s Libra initiative: “We had a lot of conversations, and the tension was between full decentralization and the reality of scalability issues, and then the volatility that we would have to put people through to enable them to use our product.”
Zuckerberg’s interest in BTC is not an entirely novel revelation. In May 2021, a flurry of speculations whipped across the crypto community when Zuckerberg named his two pet goats “Bitcoin” and “Max.” The announcement, while not directly indicative of his investment or ideological stance, certainly brewed a storm on social platforms like Twitter.
This sparked considerable speculation on Twitter (now known as X), with many analysts and enthusiasts theorizing about Zuckerberg’s potential interest in BTC. Speculation was mounting that the Facebook CEO could soon publicly announce his inaugural BTC acquisition. However, such an announcement never materialized.
Moreover, the naming of the goats led to varied interpretations, with Morgan Creek Digital’s Anthony Pompliano suggesting that Zuckerberg could be signaling his alignment with Bitcoin maximalists, whereas Robert Leshner, CEO of Compound Labs, humorously suggested that Zuckerberg will be “eating Bitcoin Max(imalists) for dinner.”
Notably, in an interview with Rolling Stone, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey shared that Zuckerberg had once served him a goat from his farm that he personally slaughtered, aligning with Zuckerberg’s aim to only consume meat he had personally harvested.
Marcus’s Efforts With Lightspark
Transitioning to his current endeavor, Marcus shared about the conception and ambitions of Lightspark. Having faced the challenges of the financial sector firsthand, he is driven to reform it. He strongly believes in BTC as a unique and neutral form of internet money.
Drawing from his own experiences, Marcus stated:
You can theorize a lot about the experience we’ve had, but having lived it has changed my worldview and my appreciation in such a way that now I have this unshakeable conviction that Bitcoin is the only form of neutral internet money there will ever be.
Lightspark, under Marcus’s leadership, is devoted to refining the Lightning Network. They aim to address its limitations by enhancing usability and troubleshooting operational challenges. Innovations from Lightspark are geared towards simplifying Lightning’s channel-based mechanism, which in turn aids in the more efficient setup and maintenance of Lightning Network nodes.
At press time, BTC traded at $26,831, down 4.5% over the past 4 days.
