The Global Account

Every day, 400 billion emails are sent. And we have Gmail for that. 400 billion text messages are sent. And we have WhatsApp and Signal and Telegram and iMessage for that. Ten billion payments are sent, about $5.5 trillion. And for that, nothing. No global account. No WhatsApp for money that works everywhere. No Gmail for money. No global account.

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Not for platforms, not for people. Platforms that are the core of the economic life of so many people pay out billions every year, and every dollar they send out hits delays, FX fees, and recipients have to wait days or weeks for money they've already earned.

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But the world has shifted. Four major things have changed in the last few years, and especially in the last 12 months.

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First, regulation. With the GENIUS Act in the U.S., MiCA in Europe, and similar pieces of legislation all around the world, it's clear now that big platforms and people can use digital assets like stablecoins without fear of being persecuted like I have in a past life.

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Second, wallets have changed in a pretty profound way, and that's true now more than ever. You can now log in with Google, with Apple, with the phone, with passkeys, and never fear losing your funds again.

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Third, we built Spark on top of Bitcoin. Spark is a layer where many of the most successful Bitcoin wallets are building, but it's also, in my opinion, the best network for stablecoins that runs on Bitcoin.

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And fourth, now you have stablecoin-backed cards, so you can issue cards globally that are funded with stablecoins and digital assets. That's also new in the last 12 to 18 months.

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So if you're a platform, you should care about all of this because you're the economic nexus for millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, of people. And every payout is a source of cost. Today, FX, correspondent banks, delays, fees left and right, these become platforms' largest cost centers.

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But here's what nobody talks about: this doesn't have to be true. Not anymore. All of that money flow is a revenue surface for platforms. So why are they giving it away? What if platforms could own all of it?

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Today I'm excited to talk about Grid Global Accounts, which we're launching today. It's a dollar account like the best dollar account you've ever had, but it works everywhere.

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So let's dive in and let me show you the product and the way it would work. This is the Grid Global Account of Barbara. She lives in Mexico. She's a creator. She gets paid by a U.S. platform. She just got a $5,000 payment from this American platform in real time, 24/7, and it lands in her account.

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Now let's dive into all of the ways that she can spend that money.

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I'm thrilled to announce a landmark partnership with Visa, and this landmark partnership is not a small one. Lightspark is becoming a principal member of the Visa network.

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What does that mean? That means Barbara can now spend in 33 countries, soon 100 before the end of the year. She can spend at any of the 175 million merchants available on the Visa network globally. She can buy a coffee. Done. She can also use the card number to go buy things online as she needs it.

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But what if she wants to move money to her bank account? She lives in Mexico. Her account is in Mexican pesos. No problem. She can do that in real time too, because Grid Global Accounts live on Lightspark Grid, which we've been building for the last four years. She can move that money on a Sunday at 2 a.m. to her bank account as she needs it.

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But it's not only working in Mexico. She can also send it to any of the 65 countries, and soon to be 75 countries, that Grid reaches in real time. That global dollar account enables her to have access to all the payment systems in all of these countries.

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But what if she wants to send money to someone on another network? Let's say someone has a Solana wallet, their choice, and they want to receive USDC. That works too, because a dollar on a Grid Global Account is a dollar on any network. It can move to USDC on Solana or to USDT on Optimism. It works.

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And of course, because Grid Global Accounts are built on Spark, it supports Bitcoin out of the box, so she can buy and sell Bitcoin natively inside of her Grid account. The beauty is that because this account is on Spark, Barbara has one wallet address that supports both dollars, or any other stablecoin for that matter, and Bitcoin. Same account. One account for dollars and Bitcoin.

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So to recap: a single dollar account, all of these endpoints, 175 million merchants on the Visa network, 65 countries, domestic real-time payment systems, and all of the rails for stablecoins and wallets.

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This is the most powerful dollar account ever, but it's not ours. It's yours. We could have launched this product for ourselves and served millions of people and businesses around the world that need an account like this. Millions of people and businesses really need something that enables them to hold dollars, hold Bitcoin, and move money globally in that way. And we would have been very successful.

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But our goal is not to have a successful app. Our goal is to build the most far-reaching network for money on top of Bitcoin. So you own the relationship as a platform, and we take care of the rest. We're invisible in your product, and we help you build it.

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What does that mean if you're a platform or a marketplace? Every feature I just showed you, every single one of them, is now a source of revenue for you: stablecoin yield on the stablecoin we'll help you issue on top of Spark, FX on- and off-ramps for local and global payments, card interchange for every transaction on that Visa card, and of course Bitcoin buy and sell that all of your endpoints will be able to do natively.

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This is already a better account. But that's not the only point, because things are about to change. We see all of those websites and apps that have been built for clumsy humans to interact with computers. This is all going away. AI is going to take over, and you're going to have a conversational interface that is going to take care of business for you.

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So how do we give agents money without losing control? That's a key question that we asked ourselves as we built Global Accounts. And we think we solved that. Let me show you.

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This is Bread, which is a wallet that's shipping in the App Store this week. The Bread team is here somewhere, and they were kind enough to let us dive into their code base to add agent delegation. And so we did.

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You can see this beautiful wallet that has a Bitcoin balance and a dollar balance. You can see agents. I can tap on agents and add a new one. In this case I'll pick OpenClaw. I'll name it M, because why not. I'll pick auto execute. I'll accept the limits. And now I can delegate rights to my account to this agent. Let's turn everything on. Done.

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What it does then is basically create a pairing code for that agent. And as long as your agent can run bash, it runs. My agent in this case, this is actually live on my phone. It's not just pretty slides. It actually works. This runs on my phone. M is an agent that lives in WhatsApp. I can drop the curl that enables that agent to connect to my account, and it'll go do it.

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The next thing you know, you have an AI agent, an almighty AI agent, that has the ability to do all the things that I showed you with money, with control. I can ask it to go buy me coffee beans, and it knows my preference. It can get a scoped card to the spending limits that I've set. It can go buy that for me on my behalf.

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The nice thing is M lives in WhatsApp. Again, this is my own personal thing. You can build your own. I can ask it to contact my friend Maria and send her $500. It has my contacts. It knows who Maria is. It'll contact her on WhatsApp. Maria lives in Brazil, so it'll get a Pix key from her to send money to her bank account in Brazil.

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In this case, the threshold tripped the limits that I set for the agent, so I'm going to have to go in and authorize that transaction. Done. Within seconds, 24/7, Maria can receive money straight into her bank account in Brazil, all coordinated by an agent.

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We can keep going. This thing can do recurring buys of Bitcoin for me, no problem, because it lives on Spark. It can organize travel, buy gifts, same model. The agent plans, the policy decides, and the account enforces. The most important thing is the user always stays in control.

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And while this is great for consumers, imagine businesses that are running a global business. They have to pay suppliers internationally. They have to pay bills. They have to move money. Imagine giving them an account like this that allows them to move money globally in this way, all powered with AI.

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I rebuilt M on OpenClaw. It's running on a Mac Mini in our Lightspark office. It works on any agent system that can run bash, so it'll work on anything.

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Everything else you've seen with AI is agent-to-agent protocol stuff, and that's nice. But none of these things are actually a consumer- or business-facing product that enables agent delegation. This is, and it's your product.

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So to recap: dollar balance, more currencies soon. We'll make it multi-currency. You can use your balance with more endpoints than any previous account ever created. It's future-ready with agent delegation, and it's yours to build. The most powerful dollar account ever is yours to build on.

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The one thing I want to leave with is that Grid Global Accounts, this wonderful product, is the kind of stuff that people said for many years you cannot build on Bitcoin. Why build on Bitcoin? We've been at it for four years now, building on Bitcoin. Why? Well, they were all wrong. All of this, everything you just saw, is built on Bitcoin and runs on Bitcoin.

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And it matters. It really matters deeply to us because Bitcoin is the only network that's neutral and open enough that no one can change the rules on you ever. You'll never be a tenant of someone else's network by building on Bitcoin.

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So sure, it's harder. Sure, it takes longer. But we have so many like-minded people here, like you saw Myles earlier from Block talk about all of the great ways that they turn Square merchants into endpoints for Grid Global Accounts, because we're building all on an open network. Or Alex from River, or others. We're all building together on an open network to make money better.

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Grid Global Accounts are available today. If you're a builder, stand up, scan the QR code, go to that link, and you can build today. And if you're a big platform, come talk to us and we'll help you break free and build the best possible money movement experience with the best app possible. Thank you.