Since the beginning of 2019, the Bitcoin-powered payments app He hits It aims to become the global crypto-backed equivalent of Venmo or Cash. On Friday, the company — led by 29-year-old entrepreneur Jack Malers — announced it was expanding to a total of 65 global markets, in addition to the United States, El Salvador and Argentina, where it already operates.
In an interview with luck In Miami, Mallers promoted consumer-facing app Strike, which offers Bitcoin and Tether transfers, through what he described as an “easy setup.”
“We believe there are billions of people who want a cash app with these characteristics and capabilities contrasted with the opaque world of cryptocurrency exchanges, hidden and unregistered licensing systems, and 1,000 different currencies,” he said.
At a time when the US cryptocurrency industry faces regulatory uncertainty, and as the Securities and Exchange Commission sues companies for offering unregistered securities, Mallers said this is an affirmation of Strike’s Bitcoin-first approach.
“I think Bitcoin stands on its own, and how obvious it is that it’s owned by nobody,” Mallers said. luck. “Every other tool in the industry has a founding team, an organization, and they privately issued some (tokens) and distributed them in auctions before they were released — that sounds a lot like security.”
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has publicly stated that he views Bitcoin as a commodity, not a security.
Mallers points out that Strike has taken a regulatory approach first in the US, including in New York, where Strike is not currently available but is in the process of applying for a so-called BitLicense.
Mallers added that Strike’s expansion into other global markets is partly a result of moving its global headquarters to El Salvador, which passed a Digital Assets Act earlier this year to create a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. According to Muellers, Strike obtained one of the first licenses under the new system, along with Bitfinex.
Mallers has ties to El Salvador and its president, Neb Bukele, who established bitcoin as legal tender in 2021. Mallers foot Bukele at the Miami Bitcoin Conference in 2021, where the president made the announcement via video.
Although Strike was initially exploited to help develop a Bitcoin experiment in El Salvador, it later backed out of the project, which suffered from Early errors and slow adoption.
despite of reports That El Salvadoran businesses and residents do not use bitcoin, Mallers also cited other metrics, such as increased tourism. “I think El Salvador found hope in Bitcoin,” he said, arguing that merchant adoption “wasn’t what determined success.”
The next challenge for Strike is to expand its relationship with banking services that allow customers to exchange bitcoin for fiat currency. Currently, customers in the new Strike Markets will only be able to receive Bitcoin from other users, though Mallers said it aims to launch new features, including a debit card, later this year. Another challenge comes in the form of network congestion and higher Bitcoin transaction fees due to the recent demand for new products such as Ordinal and BRC-20 tokens. “Bitcoin is working as intended,” Mallers argued.
“The claims that (congestion) harms the Third World, and it invalidates how emerging markets use this technology is absurd,” he said.
Mallers also pointed to another Strike feature — Send Globally — which allows users to transfer between US dollars and other currencies via Strike using Bitcoin as the intermediary, though it is limited to a dozen countries in Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia.
Currently, Strike’s dollar balances are held in Tether, a stablecoin pegged to the dollar, and has drawn criticism for its opaque accounts. Mallers said the company decided to use Tether, as opposed to other options such as USD Coin and Coinbase, due to demand from users in the Global South.
“They don’t trust Circle,” he said. “If I’m being completely honest, Circle was built for American enterprises.”
With advocates claiming that the Lightning Network can already turn Bitcoin into a payments service, Strike’s expansion marks the first attempt to build an app that allows people around the world to transact with each other.
Mike Brock is the CEO of TBD, the Bitcoin-focused division of Jack Dorsey’s Block Technology financial firm. Even as Block plans a global expansion of its Cash App payment platform, Brock has been supportive of Strike’s efforts.
“If your mission is to develop any decentralized ecosystem, you better hope that there is already a very competitive market for different companies vying for solutions within that ecosystem,” he said. luck.
Two years after Mallers presented Bukele in Bitcoin Miami, he reflects on the changing circumstances, wearing a hat emblazoned with the flag of El Salvador.
“Two years ago, people were mocking me (for our headquarters) in El Salvador for launching a product for 3 billion people, but now Coinbase is fighting with Gary Gensler,” he said. “Who is laughing now?”