Anduro, a sidechain platform incubated by Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital, is seeking partnerships with blockchain developers to build Bitcoin layer-2 solutions for cross-border BTC payments, Jullian 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, a Bitcoin layer-2 incubated by Marathon. He said payments are “at the top of my list” of development priorities.

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

Cross-border BTC payments a top priority for Anduro — Bitcoin 2024 image 0 Marathon Digital’s 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 has partnered with an RWA platform to preserve French castles, he said.

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

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Update (July 28, 2024 at 23:30 UTC): This article was updated to reflect that Anduro is a separate entity from Marathon Digital.