From a savings layer to a transactional currency: Bitcoin in 2036, which no one deliberately chose, naturally became mainstream.

Written by: David Marcus (CEO of Lightspark)

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

A café in Lagos received payment in seconds. A manufacturer in São Paulo settled an invoice to a supplier in Ho Chi Minh City using Bitcoin. A freelancer in Bangalore received a weekly salary from a startup in Austin. All these transactions were conducted on Bitcoin, but none of the parties involved were thinking about Bitcoin.

This is 2036. And the most important fact about today’s monetary system is: almost no one understands how it actually works.

Ten years ago, I wrote that Bitcoin would become the TCP/IP of the currency realm—an open settlement layer on which everything runs, completely transparent to users. This metaphor turned out to be almost literally correct.

Today, trillions of dollars flow daily on the Bitcoin network. Most of it is denominated in USD, EUR, BRL, NGN, PHP, INR, etc.—these are stablecoins pegged to local currencies or reserve currencies, routed through Bitcoin's settlement infrastructure. The businesses and individuals on both sides of the transactions are mostly oblivious. They only see their banks, wallets, or payment apps. The underlying protocol is as invisible to them as TCP/IP is to someone checking their email.

This did not happen overnight. It follows the classic path of protocol adoption: first driven by demand in areas where the existing system fails, and then, when the tools mature and economic viability becomes apparent, it suddenly explodes.

Structural change starts with the wallet

Spark enables users to hold dollars, local currencies, and Bitcoin simultaneously in the same non-custodial address, eliminating the last material friction between the three. One wallet, one address: spend in dollars, save in Bitcoin, switch to local currency whenever needed. No separate apps, no bridging transactions, no counterparty holding your funds temporarily.

This design fundamentally changes the logic of global custody. Today, a double-digit percentage of global deposits are already stored on infrastructures where users hold their own private keys. This is not because people are forced to choose between convenience and ownership, but because the wallets themselves are simply better to use. Custodial models are built into the protocol rather than being added as an afterthought.

In the past, banks held your money because there were no better options. Now better options have emerged—faster, cheaper, and you truly own the assets in your account. This shift is less about an ideological revolution and more about a product revolution; better wallets will succeed.

Because all of this operates on Bitcoin's settlement network, something unexpected happened: Bitcoin became the default savings layer for billions who originally just wanted to use dollars.

The logic is simple. You have a wallet that holds both stablecoins and Bitcoin. You spend stablecoins, and Bitcoin just sits there quietly. Over the last decade, anyone who left their money in Bitcoin has seen their savings outperform any local currency and most investment products. Not because of speculation, but because Bitcoin is the only monetary asset with a fixed supply that runs on the underlying protocol layer of the global monetary grid, with continuous demand driving its value.

As a result, people started saving in Bitcoin. First, hundreds of millions, then over a billion. Not because they read the white paper or attended conferences, but because their wallets showed two balances, one of which continued to appreciate compared to everything else. Saving in Bitcoin became as commonplace as transferring in dollars—same wallet, same framework.

Businesses followed the same path. Corporate finance departments began to hold Bitcoin in addition to operating stablecoins. First small companies in emerging markets (where local currency depreciation made the demand urgent), then large companies, and finally multinational giants. The adoption curve mirrors that of internet adoption by enterprises in the late 1990s. Once the infrastructure was proven reliable, the only question left was "how much to hold," not "should we hold it."

Latest trend: People start trading directly in Bitcoin

The latest development is that people have begun to trade directly in Bitcoin itself. It is still in the early stages, but the trend has become evident this year, with no doubt in its direction.

When your savings are in Bitcoin, and the payee also holds Bitcoin, trading valued in Bitcoin becomes the simplest option—no conversion, no intermediary currency, payment stays directly on the network where both parties hold funds.

It began with some niche scenarios: high-value B2B settlements, freelancer payments, and business activities between those whose wealth is primarily held in Bitcoin. It currently accounts for only a small fraction of total transaction volume. But as the infrastructure makes sending Bitcoin as convenient as sending stablecoins, the choice of currency will depend only on which money you trust more, rather than technical limitations.

In Bitcoin's first twenty-five years, the vision of extremists was more of an ideal. Now that the infrastructure is in place, the adoption is coming from a completely unexpected direction. People are not transitioning from the Bitcoin ideology to usability, but rather starting with an excellent wallet built on Bitcoin, realizing that saving in Bitcoin performs better, and then naturally choosing to trade with it—because their money is already there.

The infrastructure creates savers, and savers are becoming payers.

Another accelerating force: AI agents

There is another force accelerating this process, completely unrelated to human preferences.

Most business activities in 2036 are conducted by AI agents representing individuals and businesses. Your agent helps you book flights, negotiate supplier contracts, pay invoices, and manage subscriptions. Millions of such agents are continuously trading with each other, and they have all independently chosen Bitcoin as their preferred settlement asset. Not because someone programmed them to do so, but because when agents need to optimize speed, finality, and minimize counterparty risk across jurisdictions, they naturally arrive at Bitcoin as the answer.

From the agents' perspective, the math is very simple. When two agents represent their respective parties to settle value, converting through fiat currency channels increases costs, delays, and trust dependencies. Whereas Bitcoin can complete final settlements on a global network in minutes, with no intermediaries. Agents have validated, through millions of transactions, what took humanity a decade to accept: if both parties already hold Bitcoin, there’s no reason to go through anything else.

Net settlement between agents now accounts for an increasingly large share of Bitcoin's daily trading volume. An agent handling procurement for a German car manufacturer, and another managing accounts receivable for a Korean battery supplier, do not need to use USD, EUR, or KRW as intermediaries. They directly net offset obligations and then settle the difference in Bitcoin. Faster, cheaper, and with guaranteed finality.

The result is: Bitcoin is becoming the native currency of machine commerce, just as it has become the native savings asset for humanity. Both are driven by structural reasons, rather than ideology. The protocol is neutral, programmable, and globally accessible. For agents tasked with optimizing millions of transactions daily, that’s all that matters.

The global monetary system is being reconstructed from the protocol layer: open infrastructure, default self-custody, with Bitcoin as the underlying settlement for everything, and stablecoins as the interface layer. Increasingly more people recognizing the trend are making Bitcoin their preferred currency.

Most people still won't think about these things when making transfers, nor do they need to.