May 19, 2023, Jack Mallers, CEO, Strike, announced expansion of its Bitcoin payment rails on the open lighting network.
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"Here's the better half of humanity, building the most beautiful thing. It was a beautiful meeting," Mallers expressed back in 2022, during a meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. Posing with a security guard who held an umbrella over the young "25 year old kid," as Mallers called himself, had persuaded the President of El Salvador to venture down the Bitcoin path in discovery of monetary sovereignty.
"This was never about the price. It was always about hope. I felt it there. Freedom, inclusion, access, and justice for all," Mallers reminisce about his Bitcoin journey through what he terms the "global south."
Bigger than terminology, his ambition for the Clobal South began in El Salvador. However, as of Spring 2023, it's "not just the ambition." The new strategic reality, inspired by his favorite chess move, he launched "E4", doing business as Strike, repositioned in El Salvador as its new headquarters, Mallers announced May 19, 2023.
"This is where is we are operating." Mallers confirmed. But that's just the new beggining. "This is never enough," he remarked. "Bitcoin is the only way, but it's never enough," according to Mallers.
If one could get "more punk" than the original rendition of the Strike logo, a graphical itteration of the middle finger guesture, Strike just did so. It's the middle finger at the speed of light, where you hardly can detect the finger is suggesting people everywhere are fed up with the exisiting global monetary schematics.
The new Strike branding, as Mallers rolled it out on stage at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami Beach, Florida, revealed the same daring, black and white brand with tweaks here and there, like font changes, firm and straight san serif in all caps, suggesting the more we change the more we stay the same. But Strike is building a framework under a new umbrella that bridges bitcoin and fiat seamlessly on the open-source lighting network protocol to serve the masses "three billion more people today" Mallers guestimates.
In spite of recent and ongoing price depression, bank failures, extensive pressure from United States governmental bodies, obstacles injected in the monetary stream by The Federal Reserve, and to top it all scams and shams by the leading criminally charged crypto bros - in spite all that adversity, Bitcoin adoption has exponentially expanded over the preceding 12 months.
Juxtaposed against the moral failures of the past and present, is what advancements on the blockchain is all about. "The Global South has a lot "to say about the way and where the world is heading," Mallers stated. In the biggest ad blitz for El Salvador, he encourage all developers and existing ventures in the blockchain industry to jump in the boat with Strike down to the presumed Bitcoin capital of the world and the Global South - El Salvador. Where, "they're happy to serve you," Mallers declared.
Mallers admits, "I curse alot." Like many Bitcoiners and bitcoin maximalists, they behave with an unconventional attitude that mimics their more unconventional technologies. They want to shake things up. And like Jack Mallers, they want to "test the limits, push the limits."
What they're building at Strike, according to Mallers "is not another exchange. It's more accessible, open monetary network," to facilitate cross-border payments for Bitcoin and fiat to transact, within a global mobile application synchronically using a unique lighting wallet address, is what Mallers evnvisioned two years ago.
A solution seeking to a least jimmy open region-locked access money. Bitcoin has cracked the code to serving the unbankable global population and will continue to drive the future. Adoption of Bitcoin is growing rapidly, especially in regions where local currencies continue to crumble under the weight of broadening global conflict. And Bitcoin on the lighting network facilitated by Strike is making saving, transacting and paying easy and barrier free, whatever the currency.
"We want to build something beautiful, we need it to be Bitcoin. We embrace openness and all that it encompasses," Mallers stated. But will the powers that be let beauty blossom beyond the Global South?
