The Pomp Podcast - #672: Bitcoin As A Payment Rail To Disrupt The World w/ Jack Mallers

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

Jack Mallers is the founder of Strike, an application that allows anyone to send money instantly, with no fees, anywhere in the world. Strike was recently integrated into Twitter, so any user can now send dollars anywhere else in the world through the social media platform.  In this conversation, we discuss the Lightning Network, Strike's product, Twitter integration, Strike API, disrupting legacy payment systems, and why Bitcoin is inevitable.  ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now, let's kick this thing off. Jack Mallers is the founder of Strike, an application that allows anyone to send money instantly with no fees anywhere in the world. Strike was recently integrated into Twitter, so any user can now send dollars anywhere else in the world through the social media platform. In this conversation, we discuss the Lightning Network, Strike's product, Twitter integration, Strikes API, disrupting the legacy payment systems, and why Bitcoin is inevitable. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jack, as always, and I hope you do as well.

Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include a high-yield interest-bearing account, a US dollar loan product against your crypto collateral, and a no-fee cryptocurrency trading product that allows anyone to come in and buy and sell crypto with no additional fees. BlockFi also recently launched a Bitcoin Rewards credit card. It's a credit card that when you swipe it, you don't get cash back or airline miles, but rather you get Bitcoin back. I've got mine, and it is awesome. I've been using it a lot, and I really think people are going to love this card.

I'm an investor in the business. I'm a big fan of that Bitcoin Rewards credit card. And if you want to start earning today, you can visit BlockFi.com. slash Pomp. Again, BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Go check it out. Get the card. Let me know what you think. Next up is Choice. Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you're listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. I used to be in that situation too, but then Choice helped me out. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about using tax advantage dollars, buying Bitcoin, and owning your own

private keys. It's an absolute game changer. Never before I've been able to, in your retirement account, use tax advantage dollars, buy Bitcoin, and hold the private keys. You can go check them out at retirewithchoice.com slash pump. Remember, I've got my self-directed IRA there, and I think that you'll enjoy the experience, the product, and what it allows you to do. So head on over to retirewithchoice.com slash Pomp and let me know what you think about that product, retirewithchoice.com slash Pomp. All right, let's get in this episode with Jack. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments.

You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Jack, what's up, man? Yo! What's up, boys? What's up? Not much. How are you? I'm fucking fantastic. Can I curse on here?

You can do whatever you want, man. When you're changing the world, you can do whatever you want. You got shoes on? It's my world. I got Crocs. Is that a stupid question? Let's go. I mean, absolutely legendary interview yesterday. They want to make fun of the closet. They want to make fun of the clothes. And he just said, well, I got pink Crocs on. So, uh, have fun, dude. Justin Bieber Crocs, man. Get with the culture, old man. No. Yeah. How you guys doing, man? Thanks for having me.

All right. Let's get into, uh, into all this stuff. You've got a couple of different things going on. First, you announced an API yesterday. Let's first talk about the API. What exactly, it is and how it works. Yeah, API application program interface. So we think we're building the most inclusive, novel monetary infrastructure on the planet. And we first advertise that and allow consumers to interface with it in a mobile app. And that's strike the application. But we detach the actual infrastructure from the app itself and allow anyone in the world to use that infrastructure to gain benefit from what we deem the best monetary network in the planet, which is Bitcoin. And so you saw Twitter integrate it. But from a high level, what this monetary network

allows you to do, it's instant, global, and relatively free physical value settlement. So that benefits merchants so that they don't have to use processing companies like Visa to achieve finality. That benefits internet companies so that they can achieve a financial experience globally for all of their users. That's remitting money, that's micropayments, that's creator economies. And so we want to enable the infrastructure that we have and really liberate the world financially and make the world a more connected place. And so now any business, any online site, any merchant, any creator's marketplace, any social media can gain the benefit of the world's first singular global monetary standard that is Bitcoin. And so it's

really my best effort in advancing the world monetarily. And it'd be stupid to think that everyone in the world would download my mobile application and instead give them the infrastructure to integrate it into what the world already uses today. I know a lot more than most, just given that you and I have been talking about this for a while and you've been very kind of clear about what you wanted to build. I'm an investor in the company, so highly biased, but I think I and you both agree the open system is going to beat the closed system. And so what I want to kind of walk through is a couple of the nuances here to make sure people really understand. The first is if you have uh let's say venmo and i have a different payment application in the legacy world i can't

actually send you money or you can't venmo me if let's say i'm on cash app or something like that and so these closed networks end up being siloed from each other but with the lightning network integrations explain how a strike user can actually communicate uh value or send value to somebody who's using a completely different app and doesn't even know what strike is Yeah, it's not an intuitive concept, but here, let's walk through this. It may take me a second, but let's walk through this from a super high level. A Twitter user in the U.S. can send a tweet and that tweet can be received by a user in Japan, by a user in Africa, by a user in the Middle East. Right. Now, what if that user in Japan wanted to tip you, Pomp, for this amazing show and your amazing tweets and you had your Venmo account linked?

out of luck out of luck and so what the internet did for communication is before if you wanted to send a message to someone in japan a long time ago you would write it on a thinly sliced piece of wood and you'd send a fucking pigeon to go fly it across and hope that they delivered you know the pigeon spits your note out to whoever you want to read it you're like hey what are you doing for dinner and a pigeon spit is all over the message that you tried to send. Now you can send a tweet. What the internet did to communication is it gave the world a singular global protocol. So whether you want to ask a friend what they're doing for dinner, whether you want to Google the best restaurant in town, whether you want to buy tickets to the bear game,

all of those communication efforts are all just an internet request, an HTTPS TCP IP request. the internet is one singular protocol for communication so now you can use that protocol to send the message again to a user in japan to a user in saudi arabia to a user in south africa it all works globally now let's revisit money today today money is still in pigeon land money is still in uh riding a horse carriage to deliver newspaper land where if you're in the u.s you've got, Cash App and Venmo. Western Union is for remittance. But if you go to Starbucks, do you use Western Union? No, you use your Visa card. But if you're online and you buy some merchandise, you use Stripe. They're independent, bifurcated, closed networks to accomplish

monetary settlement. What Bitcoin and the Lightning Network does is it gives the world a global singular protocol for monetary settlement in the same way that the internet is a global singular protocol for communications. And so now all of a sudden, Pomp, if your Venmo account is linked to your Twitter account, can someone from Japan tip you a penny? No. But if you're hooked into the singular global interoperable monetary protocol for the world, can they tip you a penny over the Lightning and Bitcoin network? Yes. And there are so many precursors that people don't appreciate. In order to have that, you'd have to have a money that works everywhere in the world that lives outside of a governance by a nation state, that lives outside of an issuance from

a nation state, from a company. So Bitcoin as the only digital bear instrument on the planet is a precursor to this experience. And then on top of that, you need a protocol that can allow it to achieve instant physical bear instrument settlement and free physical bear instrument settlement. And that's the Lightning Network. And combined, what the internet did for communication, bitcoin and the lightning network is doing for money and you violently see that with twitter my phone won't stop fucking going off hey thanks from japan hey thanks from saudi arabia no other monetary network paypal venmo cash app chime can do that except this one and so rant over but that's what this is about i've had people in the last couple of hours somebody sent me 25 bucks

Somebody sent me a penny. Somebody sent me a dollar. Somebody just now while we were on said sending tips while the show with Jack Mallers is going on just to illustrate the point, right? Literally, people are just sending this over Twitter. Now, what I want to do is I want to make sure that we hammer home the point of separating Bitcoin, the asset, from Bitcoin, the network. Nobody claimed that this was good marketing, but the difference between Bitcoin, the asset, and Bitcoin, the network is really important here because actually what they're sending me and what they're sending you is not Bitcoin. They are sending dollars across the Lightning Network using those rails. So describe how that's occurring and why it's so important

that the rails can be used regardless of the actual or agnostic to the currency that the sender and receiver wants to use. Yeah, so I've been working on the Lightning Network and Bitcoin for close to a decade. And initially, the Lightning Network, for those that don't know, we set out to achieve two things as a distributed set of open source developers working on it. it was one, can we accomplish and solve the variable time it takes for Bitcoin to achieve finality? So traditionally, the Wall Street Journal read a headline, your Bitcoin transactions may take days, right? You can't buy coffee with a transaction that takes fucking days. The second is your Bitcoin transactions are really expensive. They're too expensive,

right? The throughput can't match Visa, and it's too expensive to buy coffee. So the Lightning Network was, can we solve those two? Can we make finality instant and can we make finality free? And then when once we accomplish that pump, we realize, like, hold on a second. Oh, my God, this is a monetary network that is able to achieve settlement at no cost anywhere in the world and instantly. And if you fuck Bitcoin, the asset for a second, fuck the digital gold thing for a second. Tell Michael Saylor to just like shut his pipe for one fucking second. And let's talk about the fact that the Visa network can't do that. The PayPal network can't do that.

The Western Union network can't do that. Matter of fact, no monetary network in human history can do that. So instead of making people spend their Bitcoin, which they don't want to do, if you just hold your Bitcoin, you just get rich, why would you spend it? Make people call up an accountant with all the tax consequences, make people go to Harvard and get a cryptography course to set up a lightning network node. What if I allowed you to link your checking account or your debit card, just like you do for Cash App or Venmo, and allowed you to use this monetary network under the hood to gain the

instant free global benefits that it gives you. So let's walk through a remittance example. If I'm sending money from the US to Japan, I have my Chase checking account linked. Strike is going to debit the money from my Chase checking account. I send $100 to Japan. Strike behind the scenes is going to take $100 out of my Chase account. I don't need to know what Bitcoin is, how it works. I don't need to think it's going up or down. I just have my checking account link. Strike takes $100, programmatically converts into Bitcoin on the Lightning Network, zips that value across oceans, across borders, all the way to Japan. And that physical value, that physical bare digital instrument Bitcoin is going to get from the United States in this gorgeous fucking women's closet

into Japan in one second and at no cost. And then we just convert it into Japanese yen because it's the only digital bear instrument global commodity that has the liquidity profile on every single currency 24-7. So we go from dollars, Bitcoin, bang, Japanese yen, give them the Japanese yen. And all of a sudden, nobody knows Bitcoin was involved in that. And Bitcoin, the asset, and whether it's the better version of gold or not, doesn't matter. We're just using it the network to make for more efficient global singular monetary standard settlement. And that's the most innovative thing of all time. I mean, are you kidding me? Not only is it the most innovative thing of all time, I think what people don't really

understand here is what you've built with Strike is global infrastructure, but you didn't have to go raise a bunch of money and go build that infrastructure yourself. What we have is we have a group of volunteers on the internet, now tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people that are setting this infrastructure up and participating in the network in a way that previously was nearly impossible, right? Visa had to go spend a bunch of money to go build out the Visa network, make sure that they had service in certain countries, make sure that there was uptime and that they could service all of those different customers and merchants. The lightning network exists. And all you have to do, whether you're a merchant, whether you're a user, whether you're

strike, et cetera, is just simply plug into the system. And now you have access to a global network and it doesn't matter whether it's el salvador or strike or me as an individual or a small business we're all just one single interface or one single node on that network yeah let me put it to you this way pom have you ever received a venmo payment from a service that wasn't another venmo user never never right okay how the fuck did i get a payment from japan onto my strike wallet Stripe's not in Japan. We're just on a network that's open. Open networks beat closed networks.

Here's another fascinating thing. Naib, president of El Salvador. I'm not a politician. I'm not speaking on his political efforts. I'm speaking about his Bitcoin efforts. He looks like a genius. You want to know why? Because Twitter just made his country better.

There are developers in London right now working on the Bitcoin protocol that are making his country better. Do you think El Salvador's population is 7 million? It's smaller than fucking Manhattan. Do you think they have the resources to continue to be on the bleeding edge of financial infrastructure? No. You know who's doing it for them? Jack Dorsey, Jack Mallers, Bitcoin Core developers, MIT professors. That's open network, network effects, economies of scale benefit.

So now people in El Salvador can save $400 million by remitting money over Twitter instead of Western Union. You know how much work he did for that? Fucking zero. Fucking zero. He didn't do shit. He just plugged into an open network and kicked his feet back and trolled the entire Internet. Now let's look at Twitter. Do you want to know Twitter cares about engagement, right?

Correct. Twitter's not taking a cut of any of this. They want users to use the platform. Today, people are going on to Twitter to remit money instead of tweet. Talk about engagement. They just integrated an open monetary network and they disrupted an entire industry on accident. So people are going to tweet, people are going to DM their friends, and now people are going to remit money to their family. And now people, because El Salvador is on a Bitcoin standard now, people can go check out at Starbucks with their Twitter account. So Twitter became a better issuing payment method at Starbucks in El Salvador,

a better remittance option for those in Western Union. And now I can go online and on Twitter and post a sexy picture of my six pack and anyone in the world can tip me and I just get spendable dollars. Twitter became a better content creation acquiring platform in one integration. It's the most insane thing ever that is network effects you can't compete with shit like that you know paypal all the you know you either integrate or you die i mean same with the internet those that didn't get on the internet dead those that won't get on bitcoin and lightning are going to die is it inevitable at this point that every single one of them have to integrate like is the economic upside and the uh incentive so strong now that all i have to do is simply plug into the system

And then I just empower my users to do all of this. So it's almost more of an opportunity cost not to do it than it is to do it. Yeah. And, and so I, I mean, I got them all right where I want. I got, Ooh, I got them right where I want them because here's their problem. The valuation of PayPal, you know, the market cap of PayPal is a proxy to the, to the network they've built, right? All the merchants on the network, all the users on the network. If I create a new version of Twitter pump, would you download and get on board? No. Cause there's no one on the network. These companies have built up networks. And so if PayPal becomes interoperable with an open standard, the network goes to zero.

When I go to a PayPal merchant, I don't have to use PayPal to check out. I could use whatever the fuck I want. And so they're at a crosshairs. They know they have to innovate. They're not stupid. I mean, these people are moneymakers. They're not dumb. But what do you do?

You just destroy the $300 billion it took you a couple decades to build? It's tough. i don't know and here's the other thing in an open network the best experience the best brand wins if that wasn't true and it was whoever got there first then i'd be using my space right okay so these guys have to invite free market open competition all of a sudden all of a sudden if i go check out at a starbucks and it's out nowadays if i go to a starbucks how are you paying for that coffee that what a stupid fucking question either my visa card or like Apple Pay. What a dumb question. What are you paying with, idiot? If there's an open network

standard, how are you paying for that coffee? I'm using my Twitter account to pay for it. I'm using my Facebook account to pay for it. I'm using this pink wallet that my nephew built to pay for it. I'm using an encrypted cypherpunk node in my basement to pay for it. And these people have these closed walled gardens that they've used for years. And I think they're scared of competition as well. So I don't know. And I don't care. Open networks, new participants are additive. So when they do come onto the network, it makes everyone that's already on it stronger. So I mean, either you could join and make me better or you can resist it and die. But either way, I win. So I don't give a fuck. We talk a lot about PayPal and Venmo as kind of

these peer to peer things. And I think people still inaccurately believe Bitcoin only to be this peer-to-peer type service where it's cute that I can send you a dollar across the Bitcoin network. With the creation of this API, it feels like major merchants, small businesses, online stores, et cetera, now get to actually integrate technology that is superior for all the reasons that we just discussed. But it puts not the PayPal and Venmo alone in the crosshairs of this technology. Instead, bigger things like Visa, MasterCard, Stripe, et cetera. Talk about kind of the more traditional payment processors and kind of how you see this technology competing with them, not just with the consumer facing, you know, kind of peer to peer apps like Venmo or

PayPal. Yeah. Let's talk about Costco. I don't know, random S&P 500, one of the biggest retailers in the world. All right. Costco gets charged, call it a solid 290, 300 basis points to accept of payment from a payment processor like Visa, right? 2.9% for the kids at home. That's a lot of money. All of a sudden, and what are they paying for? They're paying for finality. They're paying for the dollars that someone is pledging to pay them to guarantee to settle. Because God knows the dollars that are sitting in my pocket if I go check out at Costco don't magically appear in the cash register. How does all that fanciness work? Visa takes on the credit risk. Visa takes on the counterparty risk. Visa takes on the balance sheet float. Visa takes on a ton of

fixed cost and necessary intermediaries to achieve that settlement. And they charge someone like Costco 2.9% for that. This new monetary network, the Lightning Network, compared to the Visa Network, guess how much the Lightning Network charges for finality? Zero. Zero. And so let's imagine a world where I go check out at Costco and I tap my phone, scan a QR code, swipe a card, whatever your preference is, I don't care. The dollars are going to leave me, convert to Bitcoin, zip over this new network, the Lightning Network, and then convert back to dollars for Costco. And Costco, I could charge Costco five basis points, 0.05% for that. And guess how much of that is profit in my pocket? 100%. You know, if Visa tried to charge five basis points,

they'd go bankrupt because the fixed costs disallow it. And so we're not only talking about fancy tipping methods on Twitter. I'm talking about disrupting everything, popping the same way that a Google search or me streaming this on YouTube or me tweeting something. It's all an HTTP request on the internet, a remittance payment, a payment for my Costco, paying my allowance to my kid is all going to be a bolt 11 lightning network invoice. and money is going to consolidate on a singular standard. And those that live in these independent monetary networks are going to die in the same way that newspapers did when the internet came out. I've got my brother John here with me. He's probably your biggest fan. He literally put

his hat on before you came on. I'm going to wear my hat like modelers does. What questions you got for Jack? What's up, Jack? Congrats on the Twitter integration. You are truly changing the world. Your energy and enthusiasm is absolutely contagious. I love it. I love it. So I was going to ask you about all the API stuff that you guys just rolled out, but I just want to know, what is your end goal? Is it to replace the payment solutions and the monetary systems today? What is your end goal here? No, I mean, as an entrepreneur, I want to build one of the biggest companies in the world. And I think I'm uniquely positioned to do that. And it has nothing to do with me. And it just

is where Bitcoin is in its life cycle, what it's doing, and the time I'm alive right now on the planet. But my end goal is really simple. The mission of the company is to empower economic freedom for everybody and build a more connected financial world in the same way that the internet connected all of us in the communication sense i think bitcoin and the lightning network can connect all of us financially and people don't appreciate i mean the dematerialization that the internet did for the communications industry that's a really fancy word salad shit right but look at how it changed the world today envisioning a world without the internet That seems surreal. It seems disgusting. And we're seeing that same dematerialization for money right now. And so just pause and think about envision. None of us know what's going to happen. And so not only are we making the world more efficient and it's fun to mock Western Union and stuff, but you really have to believe that we're pushing humanity in the right direction and we're empowering people.

We're building on financial inclusion. We're building and improving on the quality of lives of people all over the planet and creating an environment that fosters more innovation. And humans are tool builders. I mean, I'd like to leave the place, the world a better place than when I joined it. And so all of those things and I don't know, a more ambitious, grander mission to spend my time on. So I love that. I love that. Yeah, I think just users will flow to anything that's convenient, cheap and secure. so um what for this api actually what like what other systems can kind of integrate with it so you guys have already launched with twitter what other systems do you see integrating with it without giving much uh too much like entire information that you have going on at strike yeah so okay let's revisit twitter for example so you're talking about social media companies

they want engagement uh they want global engagement by the way so now all of a sudden people are going on Twitter today to remit money. People are going on Twitter today to post their blog and get tips from anyone in the world. It became a much more inclusive place for monetary action. Do you think Facebook is just going to sit and watch that, right? And here's the other thing. Do you think Facebook is going to launch their own cryptocurrency to compete with that? No, because they'd be operating on a separate network. They don't get the network benefits. This is a shot call of you either join the singular network or get fucked. And so I think it's very interesting what Twitter did in the social media internet business.

But then we're also talking to massive retailers because they don't like paying 3% if they can pay 0%, right? And so building on that, and here's another interesting story. Let me tell you something. The story of Linux, you know, this is a nerdy one. So for the kids at home, Microsoft used to have the monopoly on OS, like these card processors or Western Union does on their individual. So let's do Visa, that Visa does on processing. And Microsoft took advantage of that. Pricing was way too high. Customer support was shitty. Product was never innovative. And what people did with Linux in the beginning, what companies would do is integrate it, air quotes, flirt with it a little bit.

hey visa there's this open source thing everyone in the world's building on it it's free and yeah it may seem like a toy now and it may seem like a nerdy pipe dream now but i don't know it's free and it kind of works and the principles are are sound and moral and so we're going to integrate it and you know that that thing you're charging at x bring that down to y customer support responds in two weeks bring that to two days you guys release a new feature every two years bring it to two months because if not i'm gonna go use this free open source thing and then all of a sudden network effects built and enough people started contributing resources to it and linux became the dominant os and the same thing is happening now it's like hold on a second visa you see this

little network here yeah it's cute yeah the kid in the hoodie in that woman's closet it's funny but it's you know interchange doesn't exist on this network and then this company integrates it and then a country integrates it and then Twitter integrates it. And then all of a sudden it gets a little spooky. And so I think history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And so I'll leave you with that, um, before I break any contractual agreements and share any secrets I'm not supposed to. All good. Keep going. Jack, when you think about, um, the infrastructure itself, talk to me about the lightning network in terms of where are we from a scalability standpoint, how much volume actually can go through this thing and what are there certain milestones or things that

you're looking for to say, Hey, this goes from, you know, pretty good now to absolutely great and can handle global transaction volume on the lightning network. Um, so firstly, uh, Bitcoin and lightning it's software and people don't appreciate that. So software is never finished. Software is an iterative process and, you know, Western union and going and walking to a physical branch and waiting in line to pick up a paper money. That's not software that, that can't really improve much. And so it's going to get better no matter how successful we are or if we fail, it's going to continue day in, day out, get better, better, better, better. And so can it handle global throughput? Yeah. I'm looking at my dashboard right now. I'm supporting the entire

Twitter network and without even a hinge and a Murda Beats hoodie. So I think that this network is really underappreciated. I don't think people really appreciate it. I mean, the Lightning Network is a link to link protocol, just like the internet. Um, if you can make an internet request, you can make a lightning network payment and that scales tremendously. And there's a ton of trade-offs if you want non-custodial, if you want this feature, that feature and strike optimizes for a different experience. And so, um, is it ready for everyone to have a non-custodial version in their browser that, you know, make some bench 400 pounds? No, no, of course not. We're working eye. But is it ready today to disrupt the entire world? Yeah. Yeah, it is. And watch this. Watch

this. And so when you think about educating folks here, what's really interesting to me and I've always loved about Strike and kind of how you guys are doing this. Nobody needs to know what Bitcoin is. Nobody needs to understand how it works. Just like I don't understand how the Visa network works when I use it. I don't understand how PayPal or Stripe works. All I know is I either punch numbers in, I insert a card, I tap, I swipe, whatever. And then they give me the good or the service. Like I literally don't care how the technology works. Just give me the shit. That's exactly how you're building this in a way where folks just say, hey, send my $5. It gets to where it needs to get. And I get back with the good, the service, you know, I paid somebody,

whatever. And the infrastructure almost doesn't matter to the end users in this way, which is very different than send me Bitcoin across this network, learn what a hex address is, understand a wallet, et cetera. Yeah. Listen to this user story. Uh, family in El Salvador, um, in the town I stayed in El Salvador, average income was $300 a month. So a $100 remittance payment, make your break a month. And because of fixed costs of the legacy financial system, sometimes fees on a hundred dollar remittance payment were upwards of 50% took days to weeks. And you had to bust this family would have to bust four hours to get to the Western Union branch, wait in line, pick it up. If a gang beat them up or threaten them to take some more of it,

well, that added the fees and then bus home. So it's a day's worth of chores. You wait days to weeks and Western Union and gangs are taking half of the money that's so material to you. Yesterday, that family linked their strike account to their Twitter account. Okay. The $100 was sent to their Twitter account instantly and for free, and they just get dollars. They have no fucking idea what Bitcoin is, nor do they, who cares? Go buy a pupusa, who cares? They just, what is this magic? What am I living in the future? Money for $100 is got, that used to take 50% weeks and a day's worth of chores and sitting on a bus. And then because El Salvador is integrated Bitcoin, they turned around and bought coffee at Starbucks with their Twitter. I mean,

you've got to be kidding me. Nobody knew Bitcoin was involved in that at all. And that's a material life. That's improving the quality of someone's life, keeping them safer, giving them more access to capital and building on efficiencies. That person is saving money, spending more time with their family. So there's a perfect user story. They have no idea what Bitcoin is. Probably never will. Who cares? So I got two questions to end this. The first, a bunch of people are asking in the chat, do you care about the Bitcoin price? Do you have thoughts about where the Bitcoin price is going? Do you have thoughts on the end of this year? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm a trader by nature. My grandfather was the youngest chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade. I think, I mean,

the monetary expansion that's happened at central banks now is disgusting. And it's the easiest environment to make money. All you got to do is not hold cash. Fucking if you put your couch on eBay, it'll trade higher next week than it does today. So no, I think we're going well into the six figures. When it happens, I don't care. I think within the next 12 months, we'll see well over $100,000 Bitcoin very easily. And here's the thing for the audience at home. Bitcoin is the only monetary asset that humanity designed with their bare hands. We built this thing from scratch And we built it to appreciate against this exact environment. It's not a gold rock we found. It's not a coin that came out. I mean, we literally sat down and engineered this thing to pump against what's going on. And so don't be surprised when it does. And yeah, I expect $100,000 to $250,000, maybe $400,000 Bitcoin in the year 2022 easily. I love it.

Last question. You have the floor. You're in the women's closet. You got the Murder Beats hoodie on. What's your message to the incumbents? What do you want them to know? If I clip this and I send it to them, what's the message to the incumbents?

Oh, I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. You let the 27-year-old in the hoodie get a little too far. So come check up and play in my court. You can't run. You got to play. And I'm going to kick your ass. So clip that. Let's go.

can we get uh john what was your favorite line from the video yesterday oh you said western union pawn to e4 your move yeah there's my chess set right behind me you see that we gotta play some time i'd bet i'd beat the western union ceo and chess blindfold you could you could beat john also not even being in the room probably right john yeah yeah maybe maybe probably not probably not john's a smart guy you know jack was what were you two-time state champion chess player yeah i'm not bad i'm not bad on the e4 carry some more weight all right where can we uh where can we send people to uh to download this thing so we've got

uh strike.me is that what the best place to send people strike.me you can find the mobile app there You can access our API there. And as of this morning, we, for the first time, are in the top charts of finance on the United States App Store. Everyone knows what we did in El Salvador. So this thing's a rocket ship. And I appreciate all the support. And go check it out.

Download it. I'll tip you on Twitter. Pawn to E4, my friend. Pawn to E4. All right. Listen, thank you for doing this. Anyone who's got any questions, tweet at Jack. He, uh, he disappears from time to time on Twitter and then just comes back with fire

threads, videos, all kinds of stuff. And then everyone just erupts and says, Oh shit, that kid's back. What's he doing now? So, uh, keep up the great work. Yeah. Love you boys. Thanks for having me. All right.

Later. Cheers.