Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA) is seeking partnerships with blockchain developers to build Bitcoin (BTC) Layer-2 solutions for cross-border BTC payments, Julian Duran, Marathon’s product lead for side chains, said at the Bitcoin 2024 conference on July 26 in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Cross-border payments are “the biggest use-case for blockchain, generally speaking, and especially for Bitcoin,” according to Duran, who also contributes to Anduro, Marathon’s in-house Bitcoin Layer-2. He said payments are “at the top of my list” of development priorities.

In emerging markets, the average cost of sending money overseas is 8% to 10% of the transaction value, with settlement often taking 3 to 4 days, according to Duran. By comparison, BTC transfers usually settle in 10 minutes or less — and Bitcoin Layer-2s could be even faster, Duran said.

Marathon Digital's (MARA) 12-month stock performance. Source: Marathon Digital

He noted that, for any payment solution to succeed, regulatory compliance is crucial — and often comes at a cost.

“With any sort of use case… that we might incubate, regulation is a top priority,” Duran said, adding that if “making sure every single license is in order… means that the product road map extends from a month to a year, that's okay.”

The high cost of compliance in the United States should not discourage developers, who are likely to find a more supportive environment in developing countries where cross-border payment solutions are most needed.

“Other jurisdictions, specifically within emerging markets, tend to be a lot cheaper and a lot quicker” to sign off on new payment systems “because the regulators and the governments… want a better cross-border payment solution” than what is currently available, Duran explained.

Beyond payments, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are also among the top areas of focus for Marathon, Duran said. The Bitcoin miner is in the early stages of a plan to tokenize whisky barrels in the US and also has partnered with an RWA platform to preserve French castles.

Marathon is among the largest corporate holders of BTC, with a treasury of some 20,000 coins worth upwards of $1 billion. It acquired around $100 million worth of BTC in the month of July alone.