Kevin Hurley
242 posts
@kphur
CTO and co-founder @ Lightspark. Creator of Spark - @spark
Tether ❤️ Bitcoin Bitcoin via Spark support in WDK (Wallet Development Kit) works seamlessly. People, machines and AI agents can now transact in Satoshi micropayments. CC @lightspark @davidmarcus
Instant, Bitcoin-powered settlement is now live across the EU & UK. We’re partnering with @herclegroup to connect deep EUR/GBP liquidity so institutions can move money between Bitcoin and bank accounts in seconds, not days. Learn more: lightspark.com/news/lightspar…
BITCOIN RAILS #39: The Bull Case for Statechains & Why Big Tech Wants Self-Custody Too | with @lightspark CTO & @spark creator @kphur 🔗YOUTUBE: youtu.be/XtcFU7UvHco 🌿SPOTIFY: open.spotify.com/episode/195ZJO… It was about four years ago that Facebook’s famous effort at creating its own cryptocurrency and crypto-native payments system (Libra, then Diem) was effectively halted by an unending stream of regulatory scrutiny and compliance blocks. Some leaders of the project went on to create crypto-projects of their own (e.g. SUI and Aptos), however, “Head of Facebook Financial” @davidmarcus, along with Diem wallet technical lead @kphur made the key bet that Bitcoin’s decentralized rails were the only in the crypto space likely to be undisrupted by regulatory roadblocks long-term. They went on to create @lightspark - initially designed to make Lightning “usable” by enterprise payments companies - but ultimately came to the conclusion that Lightning alone was not going to scale to 8 billion people globally. After heavy research on scaling solutions for Bitcoin, they eventually developed a “statechains” layer-2 solution of their own @spark – which, since going live, has garnered attention from Ordinals degens to enterprise payments companies alike. In this episode, @kphur and I get into: — How the Libra/Diem regulatory blocks went down and why these concerns will likely only be addressed by a truly decentralized system like Bitcoin (+ self-custody on the wallets side) — Why Lightspark started building on the Lightning Network (raising more than 2X field leader @lightning ), but developed serious concerns about its ability to scale — What a multi-system Bitcoin scaling future might look like: with Lightning as the liquidity provider feeding self-custody friendly systems like Spark, Ark, e-cash systems, and more. —What a multi-system Bitcoin scaling future might look like: with Lightning as the liquidity provider feeding self-custody friendly systems like Spark, Ark, e-cash systems, and more. Bitcoin Rails is powered by: — Best In Slot (@bestinslotxyz) – the leading API for Ordinals and BRC-20 data aggregation and indexing — Spark (@lightspark) – a Statechains implementation leading the path toward institutional adoption of Bitcoin-powered payments — Citrea (@citrea_xyz) – the leading Bitcoin rollup technology and contributor to the BitVM alliance 📌 Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:26 How Lightspark came to life 03:41 Lessons from Libra and Diem 08:35 Universal Money Addresses and global payments 13:45 How traditional finance is approaching blockchain adoption 33:08 The core challenge of Lightning 37:53 Exploring alternatives: ARC and Statechains 40:18 How Statechains work and their benefits 56:43 The future of Lightning and Spark’s role
After years working on one of the most widely watched crypto projects in the world (👋 Libra/Diem @Meta ), @lightspark CTO @kphur shares why he and tech heavy weight @davidmarcus knew they "had to build on Bitcoin... because it's the only [chain] that matters." "Where the problem came in was scaling for self-custody... we're not gonna be able to do that on Lightning." Full episode on the development of statechains-style L2 @spark drops tomorrow—and yes, we're gonna talk about what happened at @Meta
SDK Class of Q3 2025 🎓 Meet @SatGoBTC The bitcoin app for wizards and people who love them
In the spirit of full transparency, we’re sharing our roadmap publicly. Hold us accountable.
