PayPal former president confirms Bitcoin daily processing in the trillions! Lightning Network surpasses SWIFT

Former PayPal president and Lightspark CEO David Marcus stated that Bitcoin has the potential to process trillions of dollars in transactions daily. Marcus referred to Bitcoin as a “money network” and believes that BTC will become a global settlement layer for low-cost instant transactions. The Lightning Network will enable near-free and instant transfers, while SWIFT processes about 5 trillion dollars daily.

David Marcus's authoritative endorsement in the payment industry

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Former PayPal President and Lightspark CEO David Marcus stated that Bitcoin has the potential to process trillions of dollars in transactions daily. This was mentioned by him while emphasizing the role of Bitcoin as an open monetary network in a recent interview. Marcus believes that BTC will become a low-cost, real-time global settlement layer.

David Marcus's background gives his views significant weight. As the former president of PayPal, Marcus has a deep understanding of global payment systems. PayPal processes hundreds of millions of transactions daily, with total amounts reaching billions of dollars, and the experience Marcus accumulated in this role allows him to accurately assess the technical capabilities and market potential of Bitcoin. After leaving PayPal, Marcus joined Facebook (now Meta) to lead the Diem (formerly Libra) stablecoin project, which was ultimately terminated due to regulatory pressure, but further deepened his understanding of digital currency.

Currently, Marcus serves as the CEO of Lightspark. Lightspark focuses on building the infrastructure for the Lightning Network, providing solutions for businesses to integrate Bitcoin Lightning payments. The company has established partnerships with multiple financial institutions and payment processors to promote the commercialization of the Lightning Network. Marcus's career trajectory shows that he has been pursuing one goal: to establish a global, low-cost, instant payment network. From PayPal to Diem and then to Lightspark, this path ultimately leads to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

Marcus's prediction is not a fantasy. He stated that the infrastructure for Bitcoin is ready to scale with the Lightning Network. He mentioned that the Lightning Network will enable near-free and instant transfers, while previous systems (SWIFT or Visa) are not instant transfers. These two networks handle approximately $5 trillion and $33 billion in funds daily, respectively. Marcus believes that as adoption increases, Bitcoin will surpass them.

Bitcoin vs Traditional Payment Systems Comparison:

SWIFT: Processes about 5 trillion dollars daily, settlement time 1-5 days, high transaction fees.

Visa: Processes about $33 billion daily, settlements are instant but merchants must pay a 2-3% transaction fee.

Bitcoin main chain: Approximately 15-20 billion USD daily, confirmation time 10-60 minutes, fee volatility.

Lightning Network: Theoretically capable of processing trillions daily, confirmation time is a few seconds, and transaction fees are nearly zero.

He emphasized that this transition will be gradual due to the increasing global prevalence of wallets and embedded payment systems. Marcus is not predicting that Bitcoin will process $5 trillion tomorrow, but rather pointing out that in the coming years, as infrastructure matures and adoption rates increase, Bitcoin has the potential to reach that scale.

Lightning Network supports 20,000 nodes, capacity surges by 3000%

Marcus's company Lightspark has built the Lightning Network infrastructure to facilitate the expansion of Bitcoin. By 2025, the Lightning Network will have over 20,000 active nodes, with capacity growing by 3,000%. It can process millions of transactions per second, which technically makes Marcus's predictions possible. The company provides APIs and SDKs for developers, enabling businesses to integrate Lightning payments.

The Lightning Network is a Layer-2 scaling solution for Bitcoin. The Bitcoin main chain can only handle about 7 transactions per second, a throughput that is far from sufficient to support global payment demands. The Lightning Network addresses this issue by establishing payment channels outside of the main chain. Users can conduct an unlimited number of transactions within the channel, with only the opening and closing of the channel needing to be recorded on the main chain. This design allows the Lightning Network to theoretically process millions of transactions per second.

20,000 active nodes are an important indicator of the maturity of the Lightning Network. Each node can serve as a relay station for payment routing; the greater the number of nodes, the higher the connectivity and reliability of the network. A capacity growth of 3,000% indicates a significant increase in the total amount of Bitcoin locked in Lightning channels, reflecting users' confidence and willingness to use the Lightning Network.

The API and SDK provided by Lightspark lower the technical barriers for enterprises to integrate Lightning payments. Traditionally, integrating Bitcoin payments required in-depth technical knowledge, including node operation, channel management, liquidity optimization, and more. Lightspark encapsulates these complexities behind an easy-to-use interface, allowing businesses to join the Lightning Network as simply as integrating Stripe or PayPal. The improvement of this infrastructure is the technical prerequisite for the realization of Marcus's predictions.

Real-world use cases have begun to emerge. Some merchants in Central American countries are using the Lightning Network to accept cross-border remittances, avoiding the high fees and long wait times of traditional banking systems. Some gaming and content platforms are using the Lightning Network for micropayments, allowing users to tip creators or purchase virtual items for a few cents. Although these early applications are not large in scale, they demonstrate the practicality of the Lightning Network.

Institution Adoption and Stablecoin Driving Bitcoin Transformation

Bitcoin continues to grow through institutional investment. This follows last year's record inflows into the major market and increased regulatory transparency. The market capitalization of BTC is close to 1.3 trillion dollars, with on-chain transaction volumes of about 15 to 20 billion dollars per day. Marcus claims that the enhanced confidence of institutional investors will benefit Bitcoin's transformation into financial infrastructure rather than a speculative asset.

The forms adopted by institutions are diverse. Since the launch of Bitcoin ETF, it has attracted over $60 billion in capital inflows, allowing traditional institutions such as pension funds and insurance companies to compliantly allocate Bitcoin. Public companies like MicroStrategy and Tesla have included Bitcoin in their balance sheets as a long-term store of value. El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, and although the implementation results are mixed, it has set a precedent for national-level adoption.

Marcus stated that stablecoins on Bitcoin are one of the main factors for its mass adoption. Projects like Stacks and RGB support the issuance of stablecoins on the Bitcoin network. The combination of stable assets with the Lightning Network is expected to drive the development of everyday business and international payments. This perspective is insightful as it points out a key barrier to Bitcoin adoption: price volatility.

The drastic fluctuations in Bitcoin prices make it difficult for it to be used as a daily payment tool. Merchants are reluctant to accept Bitcoin because the received Bitcoin may depreciate by 5% or even 10% within a few hours. Consumers are also unwilling to use Bitcoin for payments because the Bitcoin they hold might appreciate tomorrow, making today’s payment seem like a “waste.” Stablecoins solve this problem: they maintain price stability, making them suitable for daily transactions while leveraging the security and decentralization of the Bitcoin network.

The technical path for issuing stablecoins on the Bitcoin network includes Stacks' sBTC and the RGB protocol. Stacks is the smart contract layer for Bitcoin, allowing for the execution of complex applications on Bitcoin, including the issuance of stablecoins. RGB, on the other hand, is a client-side validation protocol that can attach additional asset information to Bitcoin UTXOs. These technological innovations enable Bitcoin to serve not only as a store of value but also as a settlement layer for stablecoins and other assets.

Technical and Adoption Dual-track Support for Trillion-level Goals

In theory, the Lightning Network can support millions of transactions per second. Bitcoin's hash rate is expected to reach an all-time high in 2025, further enhancing its security and reliability. Marcus has predicted that after the infrastructure matures, BTC will compete with global payment networks in terms of scale and efficiency.

Hash rate is a direct indicator of the security of the Bitcoin network. In 2025, the Bitcoin hash rate reached an all-time high, meaning that more computing power was invested in network protection, making a 51% attack nearly impossible. This level of security is crucial for handling trillion-level transaction volumes, as any security vulnerabilities could lead to catastrophic losses.

However, from the current daily range of 15 billion to 20 billion USD to several trillion USD, there needs to be a growth of several times or even hundreds of times. What conditions are needed for this growth? First is regulatory clarity. Only if major global economies recognize the legal status of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network will financial institutions dare to adopt it on a large scale. Second is technological maturity. Although the Lightning Network can theoretically handle millions of TPS, stability, routing optimization, and liquidity management in actual operations need continuous improvement. Third is user experience. Lightning wallets need to become as simple and easy to use as Alipay or Venmo for the average person to adopt.

Marcus's forecast timeframe is not explicit, but based on the term “gradual transition,” it could be a vision of 5 to 10 years. Within this timeframe, as more wallets integrate Lightning functionality, more merchants accept Lightning payments, and more financial institutions use Lightning for cross-border settlements, the daily processing volume of Bitcoin could potentially grow exponentially. A key turning point could be when a large payment processor, such as Visa or Mastercard, announces support for the Lightning Network, which would instantly bring Bitcoin payments to hundreds of millions of users.

Marcus's perspective on the combination of PayPal and Bitcoin is particularly worth noting. PayPal already supports users in buying and selling Bitcoin, but has not yet fully opened up Bitcoin payment functionality. If PayPal integrates the Lightning Network, allowing its 400 million users to make instant, low-cost cross-border transfers using Bitcoin, it would be a significant breakthrough for Bitcoin adoption. Although Marcus has left PayPal, his understanding of the payment industry and his work at Lightspark may be paving the way for this integration.

From an investment perspective, Marcus's forecast provides fundamental support for the long-term value of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin really becomes the global settlement layer processing trillions of transactions daily, its value will far exceed the current market capitalization of $1.3 trillion. As a settlement network, the value of Bitcoin should be related to the transaction volume it processes and the locked liquidity. If it processes $5 trillion in transactions daily, with an annual processing volume of approximately $1,800 trillion, Bitcoin's market capitalization may need to reach several trillion or even tens of trillions of dollars to support sufficient liquidity.