David A. Marcus
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David Marcus ( ro, Mărcuș; born April 12, 1973) is an American
entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...
. He was the co-creator of Diem, a cryptocurrency project initiated by Facebook. He is the former president of
PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
and Vice President of Messaging Products at
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
where he ran the
Facebook Messenger Messenger is a proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and ...
unit from 2014 until 2018. In December 2017, Marcus was appointed to the
Coinbase Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work and the company lacks a physical headq ...
Board of Directors, from which he stepped down in 2018. In 2021, he stepped down from Facebook. As of May 2022 he is the co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, a cryptocurrency startup which works on bitcoin and the
Lightning Network The Lightning Network (LN) is a "layer 2" payment protocol layered on top of Bitcoin (and other blockchains and cryptocurrencies). It is intended to enable fast transactions among participating nodes and has been proposed as a solution to the ...
.


Early life and education

Marcus was born on April 12, 1973 in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
to a Romanian father and Iranian mother. He grew up in
Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...
, Switzerland. At the age of 8, he learned BASIC computer coding. Marcus attended the
University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary. It remained focused on theology until the 17th centur ...
for one year before dropping out initially to support his family by working at a bank and later to pursue an entrepreneurial career.


Career

In 1996 at age 23 Marcus founded GTN Telecom, a Geneva-based provider of internet access and telephone service. He was the Chairman and CEO of that company until it was acquired by World Access in 2000. After that, Marcus founded Echovox, a mobile media monetization company. In 2008, he founded Zong, an offshoot of Echovox that allowed users to pay for items online directly through their mobile phone bills. Zong was acquired by
eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...
's PayPal in August 2011 for $240 million, and Marcus joined PayPal as vice president and general manager of the company's Mobile Division. PayPal's mobile division launched PayPal Here, an offline mobile card reader service. In April 2012 Marcus replaced Scott Thompson as President of PayPal after Thompson went to
Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...
. In September 2013, Marcus oversaw PayPal's $800-million acquisition of Braintree (the parent company of
Venmo Venmo is an American mobile payment service founded in 2009 and owned by PayPal since 2013. Venmo was aimed at friends and family who wish to split bills, e.g. for movies, dinner, rent, or event tickets etc. Account holders can transfer funds ...
). In June 2014, Marcus left PayPal to join Facebook as its Vice President of Messaging Products. There he oversaw the development of the Facebook Messenger mobile app. The app reached 1 billion active users in July 2016. Marcus is credited with the introduction of Messenger's
P2P P2P may refer to: * Pay to play, where money is exchanged for services * Peer-to-peer, a distributed application architecture in computing or networking ** List of P2P protocols * Phenylacetone, an organic compound commonly known as P2P * Poin ...
payment platform which was released in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
in June 2015. Marcus would later help implement business payments on the platform. In December 2017, Marcus was appointed to the Board of Directors of the cryptocurrency exchange,
Coinbase Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work and the company lacks a physical headq ...
. According to the announcement, he was chosen based on his experience with digital payments at both PayPal and Facebook and his knowledge of cryptocurrency. He is also considered an early promoter of cryptocurrency. In May, 2018, Marcus moved from Vice President of Messaging Products to lead the experimental blockchain group at Facebook. In August 2018, Marcus left the board at Coinbase, at least in part to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest with his work on Facebook. By February 2019, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' reported that Marcus was head of a program to develop a cryptocurrency that users of
WhatsApp WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows use ...
(which is owned by Facebook) could transfer in order to facilitate cross-border payments. In June 2019, Marcus and Facebook announced
Libra Libra generally refers to: * Libra (constellation), a constellation * Libra (astrology), an astrological sign based on the star constellation Libra may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Libra'' (novel), a 1988 novel by Don DeLillo Musi ...
, a cryptocurrency managed by Facebook and other companies as the Libra Association. Marcus was placed in charge of Calibra, a subsidiary of Facebook created for the project. According to Clare Duffy, writing for ''
CNN Business CNN Business (formerly CNN Money) is a financial news and information website, operated by CNN. The website was originally formed as a joint venture between CNN.com and Time Warner's ''Fortune'' and ''Money'' magazines. Since the spin-off of Tim ...
'', "criticism from politicians, regulators and finance experts came swiftly." Concern was raised that Libra would be destabilizing to global currencies and central banking, and that Libra would give Facebook even more control and more personal information than it already has. Libra's announcement also coincided with a multi-state antitrust probe of Facebook (see '' Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook''). In July 2019, Marcus was called to testify before the US Senate Banking Committee regarding Libra. He stated that Libra would not be launched without approval from regulators. In May 2020, Calibra was renamed Novi, which would also be the name of a proposed
cryptocurrency wallet A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or a service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often al ...
offered by Facebook. In August 2020, Marcus was placed in charge of the Facebook Financial (F2) division, which would handle Facebook's payment service and Whatsapp Pay in some countries. Marcus continued to work to gain regulatory approval for Facebook to use Libra for international payments. In December 2020, Libra was renamed Diem, and the Libra Association was renamed the Diem Association. This change was to emphasize changes made to the plan following its harsh reception from regulators. Marcus is one of five board members of the Diem Association. In November 2021, Marcus announced that he would be leaving Facebook (recently renamed Meta) at the end of the year. Stephane Kasriel is scheduled to take over as head of Meta's financial services division. In May 2022, Marcus co-founded a company called Lightspark that describes itself as using the
Lightning Network The Lightning Network (LN) is a "layer 2" payment protocol layered on top of Bitcoin (and other blockchains and cryptocurrencies). It is intended to enable fast transactions among participating nodes and has been proposed as a solution to the ...
to "extend the capabilities of bitcoin". The company received financing led by venture capital firms a16z and Paradigm.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Marcus, David A. 1973 births Living people PayPal people American people of Iranian descent American people of Romanian descent Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area People associated with cryptocurrency