We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC034: Bitcoin as Legal Tender & Near-Zero Exchange Fees w/ Jack Mallers (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wednesday release of the podcast where we're talking about Bitcoin. Today's guest is making some of the biggest moves in the space, and that's none other than Jack Mahlers, who's the CEO and founder of Strike. Many are aware of El Salvador making their Bitcoin legal tender announcement, and Jack and his team were the ones really piecing this all together and putting everything in place. On this show, Jack and I get into the finer aspects of why this is so important and how the technology works. We also talk about his new announcement to provide Bitcoin exchange services

Starting point is 00:00:35 at nearly no fee for people using his strike application. We also talk a little bit about him leading the Indy 500 effort with the Bitcoin car and much, much more. So without further delay, here's my chat with the one and only Jack Mullers. You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. All right. So like I said in the introduction, I'm here with Jack Mullers. Jack, welcome back to the show. I am thrilled to have you here. Preston, I'm a huge fan, really, really humbled to be back and super, super excited. So I've got to start this off by just telling you that I was watching this video of you doing an interview on Fox. I think it was Fox business.

Starting point is 00:01:35 And I don't know the lady's name, but she was there interviewing you. And you were just giving this bang-up response on, I think it was some of the stuff you were doing down in El Salvador. or she like totally steps in, interrupts you. You're calmer than ever. Just let her, you know, do her thing. And then you come back in with an excellent like counter response or whatever. When you're doing these things on like these major news outlets, like the segments are like one minute. You can't even say anything meaningful in a minute, but you're still like banging out like this amazing response. But the best part for me was at the end, she says, well, thanks for coming on Jack Ballers. And I don't even remember what was said in that entire interview other than at the end,

Starting point is 00:02:22 she called you Jack Ballers. And I'm convinced it was a total Freudian slip. It was amazing. I was just, I couldn't stop laughing. I think I listened to it three times in a row because it was so funny. Yeah, that was fun. Your name's Liz. her credit, and I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I've done a few of those now, and they send you questions beforehand, and we get on a few minutes before to do the prep and make sure my lighting, and I'm an absolute wild card. I'm willing to admit that, and so they usually have me come on early to make sure I'm not like going to join in a speedo or something. And I've got my hoodie, and are you sure you want to wear that? Yeah, I'm actually

Starting point is 00:03:01 way more than sure. I'm going to wear this. And we review the questions and she goes, hey, just a heads up, They actually don't want me to ask any of this. They really want me to press you on the IMF and the World Bank. And I told her, said, okay, just be careful what you wish for. And she said, okay, I don't know what that means, but we're going live. And then we went live. And that is what happened. And so I know afterwards, she actually enjoyed the response as well.

Starting point is 00:03:28 She's a very sweet lady. So no harm, no foul. But no, I'm a straight shooter, man. Everyone knows that. So it is what it is. It was great. And you provided such a good response. And I mean, we were roughing her up in the comments and everything because, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:43 she interrupted you. But I think it's such a short amount of time. I think a lot of people don't realize that like the correspondence are really trying to like get as many questions in there as they can without letting people go on like this monologue or whatever. But dude, at the end when she called you Jack Ballers, I mean, yeah, I don't know if she meant it as a compliment, but I'll take it. I took it as a compliment for you. I mean, I was just like, that is amazing. You couldn't have got a better outcome there at the end. So the first question that I've got here for you is just really kind of, you did this amazing

Starting point is 00:04:14 interview with Peter McCormick. You laid out the whole El Salvador thing. I don't want to go back and rehash that story. Instead, I would point people towards Peter's discussion with you to kind of really get the ins and outs of how just amazing this entire thing was that unfolded. But for people on our show that aren't familiar with any of that or maybe didn't listen to Peters, just give us a quick recap of what happened in El Salvador. And it doesn't have to be long, but just kind of give us that.

Starting point is 00:04:45 And then I want to dig a lot deeper into some of the ideas that happened there. My name is Jack, and I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Strike. And what we do from a very high level is we aim to provide the best experience on top of the world's first open monetary network. which is Bitcoin. And we can delve into why I think that that's going to grow into the biggest company in the world and why I'm very passionate about what we're doing. To make a tremendously long story short, we launched a product in the United States, saw a great amount of success. And one of the early ambitions when I first started the company was attempting to reinvent cross-border payments. I think they're tremendously inefficient. And I think they really

Starting point is 00:05:26 showcase the inefficiencies in the legacy financial system and what a tremendous amount intermediaries, cost of capital, balance sheet, flow, all of these things can do to a financial experience and end up harming an entire country like El Salvador. So El Salvador, over 20% of the country's GDP is in remittance. They failed to establish that own nascent state currency, so they operate on the U.S. dollar. They have a tremendous immigration problem, and it actually stems from the lack of financial stability and opportunity in the country. And you either, for more or less. I don't want to oversimplify, but it's pretty close. You either result of violence and join a gang or you immigrate to the United States and remit money home. And so, yes, we want

Starting point is 00:06:12 to launch in Europe. Yes, we want to launch in all these countries, but I figured it was a really great place to start because on top of all of that, there was this Bitcoin Beach project, which had really cultivated a culture of caring about financial inclusion and solving it with this world's first open monetary network. And so I figured, hey, if we can launch our product there, reinvent cross-border payments, remove the variable cost that really prices out small remittance and fix this from the ground up, we can actually literally improve the GDP of a country and really reinstill basic human freedom and bring a tremendous amount of financial inclusivity to a country that has 70% of the citizens that don't have a bank account. And it was a pilot for us as a company,

Starting point is 00:06:55 but it was really just like a mission for me as a human being. And so I went to the there just to launch an MVP, launch a pilot. We were hoping to get a couple hundred users and learn from the data gathered and try and get a better understanding of, hey, this idea that I have carry any legs. And then through being there, we started, we got a couple users a day. It was 10 users a day, 100 users a day, 1,000 users a day, 20,000 users a day. And the thing took on a life of its own. And it really validated a lot of the assumptions that the unbanked have a terrible financial experience and really are preyed upon by the existing financial system. And they saw this as just a premium experience. And by ways of that, I got contacted by the president who saw strike as a

Starting point is 00:07:44 glimmer of hope almost in the country. And that president then kind of outlined to me, And to be clear, I have no commercial relationship. It's purely an advisor and just spoke my mind. There's no material benefit for me as an individual or strike as a company. But the president kind of outlined these two problems that he viewed his country having, but a lot of the world having is the unintended spillover from the Federal Reserve causes a lot of problems to the economic stability of his country. and the lack of financial inclusion really prevents basic human freedom for majority of his citizens. And he saw Bitcoin in this open monetary network and this established hard money monetary policy defended by a distributed network and what strike was doing as hope and a better future for the country

Starting point is 00:08:33 and expresses interest in making Bitcoin legal tender. And I was more than willing to give my thoughts and opinions through the process and I went on stage in Miami. And I'll stop there before I ran longer, but that's kind of what happened. And shortly, so you went on stage at Miami, you made the announcement that the president of El Salvador, you played the video, and he made the big announcement that they're going to make it legal tender. In addition to the U.S. dollar remaining as legal tender in El Salvador, they can be used. The citizens have the choice to choose between which currency or hard money they want to choose to use or kind of a combination of both. I think that's probably for me, Jack,

Starting point is 00:09:14 The most important piece of all of this is the country using it for the network, not necessarily the store of value. That's just like an added benefit. So explain what that means to the person listening that Bitcoin, the network being used in El Salvador. Well, to be clear, I'm under the impression that they're using both, which I think is the most powerful statement that Bitcoin can't author itself because it's not an established entity, but that has been co-authored and that has been used, Bitcoin has been used by. And so what I mean by

Starting point is 00:09:52 that is that one, you have two problems if you're El Salvador, but also if you're like the entire world, every country is that the unintended spillover, and I use unintended with air quotes, the monetary expansion of central banks causes significant issues to every country, right? It has this inflation problem. How many stimulus checks? My high school friends are out buying vacations to Hawaii and expensive Manhattan's at the bar with their $1,200 stimulus checks. How many stimulus checks you think landed in El Salvador? Zero. And the president was very vocal about that is that monetary expansion and all the money printing is really doing an extreme disservice to his country. And so, how do you solve for that? Well, you know, subscribing to a monetary policy.

Starting point is 00:10:40 that has a fixed supply, unknown issuance, and defended by a distributed network, and can't be co-opted by any central bank or central government. And the other problem that he has is financial inclusion and that the banking system in El Salvador is tremendously broken. There actually isn't an established standard, like the automated clearinghouse, like ACH, to send money from one bank to another. So they physically walk cash between banks. And 70% of the country doesn't have a bank account anyways. And so, in my opinion, having access to basic financial services is a sound basic human freedom. And so the president was very vocal about, well, we have a tremendous amount of unnecessary exposure to central banks, especially in this macro environment. And we have a basic

Starting point is 00:11:25 human freedom problem in the country. Citizens are born. And by the time they get old enough to strive for a high quality of life and have the ambition to live a high quality of life, they join a gang or they leave the country. That's a terrible place to live. And how do I fix that? What's my solution there? Ask the Federal Reserve to stop printing money or give us some of the stimulus, not really plausible or reasonable or achievable? And then how do I develop financial inclusion in the country? And so what we discussed for a long time, the government body and I, is, you know, El Salvador is also, and they know this, a very under-resourced country compared to the United States. So we talked about is what if you can plug into an open monetary network, a network where

Starting point is 00:12:10 there is no gatekeeper and a network that comes with inherent network effects and economies of scale that are unprecedented? Do you know how many people are working on the ACH network or the Visa network? You know what's crazy? Not as many as that's working on the Bitcoin network now. The network affects economies of scale that come with. When you plug into the Bitcoin network, all the MIT professors that are working on cryptography now work for your country. All the developers in London working on a Bitcoin core now work for your country. The network effects that come inherent in an open system where they can just plug in, allow open interoperability within their whole country, remain interoperable with all of these

Starting point is 00:12:51 innovative services, all of these ambitious entrepreneurs, all of these established universities, and subscribe to a monetary policy that their reserves can be reliant on that won't change where the issuance is known, the supply is fixed. And all of a sudden, you've kind of solved two of humanity's longest dated problems, but then specifically the highest priority problems of almost every country in the world right now. And that was the high level insight. And also why it was Bitcoin only, by the way. And we can get into why Althcoins, like this is a great example of why Alkcoins don't make any sense.

Starting point is 00:13:25 They never have. But now, like, we have a real time example of that. But that was from the highest level of the conversations is how to solve the spill over effect of monetary expansion from central banks and how to build basic financial inclusion for a country that's relatively unbanked. And that, in turn, instills basic human freedoms. That in turn should, in theory, over a long enough time frame, solve their immigration problem, solve the violence problem, improve the security of the country, improve the stability of the country, improve the quality of life. And then the last point I'll make is the government actually

Starting point is 00:13:58 they're more free market fans than they are Bitcoin. They obviously are Bitcoin. They obviously But their ultimate goal was designing a pure society. And they were very vocal about this concept that, you know, even in the United States, by the time you're 18, you have six figures of debt to get an education and a degree in something that you're relatively unclear you even want. And by the time you graduate, you optimize your life around paying that back. Virtually all of my friends hate their life, right? The kids I went to high school with, they hate their job. Why don't you do something you like? Well, how am I supposed to pay back $200,000 to Syracuse or whatever? And then by the time you pay that back and you're like,

Starting point is 00:14:32 45, 50, 50, 50, 60, you subscribe to more debt in the form of a mortgage, in the form of a car note, in the form of health insurance. So you're constantly in debt. You're constantly optimizing your life around paying debt back. And you're never allowed to pursue your passion. Your life is constantly optimized around paying back your debtor instead of finding love, pursuing interests, right? And so they talked about if you can fix the money, you can fix the world. There's merit to that quote in that mean. And it would fix the monetary expansion in central banks. It would fix the financial inclusion problem. And then over the long term, in theory, enable a truly pure free market society. And they're very vocal about that. And

Starting point is 00:15:08 so it starts somewhere, which is here where we are today. You can never create equity for yourself. At the end of the day, the model that you just described, a person can't start their own business unless they have some windfall from maybe a family member passing or something to create equity for themselves. So if you're always creating equity for somebody else, it's really hard to get ahead and pay down debt outside of the pittance that you're constantly struggling to pay. It's amazing how you just described that, Jack. It was like, sorry, not to cut you off, but I just want to harp on this. I want to give the government body credit where credits do because I, you know, I rarely now have the time or I'm allowed to like speak openly about this stuff. So I'm very

Starting point is 00:15:53 excited to be here. Hopefully I don't rant too long. But I would sit down and And I was like, wow, this is so cool. You know, we're talking about Bitcoin with the government. I wonder where this goes. And they would sit down and be like, aren't you so disenthus and unimpressed with the lack of art and creativity in the world today? And have you noticed that artistry is trending down? And I was like, when I first sat down, I was like, where am I? Like I'm in El Salvador talking about crazy concepts.

Starting point is 00:16:18 But it was a long-winded way of saying, if we can fix the money and bring relative stability to human life and re-insure a high quality of life, we can re-troject artistry, creativity, re-instill human freedoms and build a society where people are comfortable being themselves and life is about pursuing passions and not about paying back debts or being rich. Anyway, I think they're just getting started and they were very intentional too on projecting this to the entire world. They saw themselves as the brave first step and almost took on the responsibility as an onus. We have to do this because the U.S. can't and the EU can't.

Starting point is 00:16:53 And we are uniquely positioned to be the brave first warrior. The thing that you get with what you're describing is, you know, if you're playing a game of monopoly and you're at the end of the game and there's consolidation of the board into the hands of one player, that's kind of where we're at globally is you're having this total consolidation of equity into the hands of the few. And we're all aware of what the consequences of that are because we're living it right now. But one of the things that I really want to hit on with Bitcoin the network. So for people that are looking at Bitcoin that maybe aren't intimately involved but are curious and they're kind of listening to this conversation, they're looking

Starting point is 00:17:31 at the price action and they're saying that price action is so volatile, how can somebody who's not, that doesn't have a lot of disposable income down in El Salvador, even remotely subscribe or want to use this form of money when it's all over the place? They have this really fine line of a variable cost versus their fixed costs in their daily lives that they can kind of handle. And here's this thing that's got 60 or 70 percent volatility. So how does Bitcoin work in an environment like that? I mean, you see professors from Johns Hopkins, Hankie, or whatever his name is. He's out there making this argument. I'm just rolling my eyes. I'm like, dude, you don't get it. You're totally missing the boat on how it's being used down there.

Starting point is 00:18:19 So explain to people how this person with not a lot of disposable income is using the Bitcoin network. So I think it's really important to conceptually understand one of the mental models I deploy at strike and one of the core thesis of the business is that there needs to be a divide of Bitcoin between the asset and the network. And literally there is capital be lower B. Conceptually, it's really important to understand, right? Bitcoin the asset, you have this 21 million hard cap. You have this known issuance. You have this monetary policy that's praised, rightfully so. Bitcoin, the network, though, actually achieves a tremendous amount, arguably even more, although it's not competition, but it's just as fascinating. And so what I want everyone to do that's listening is actually do away with the price of Bitcoin,

Starting point is 00:19:07 do away with the fixed supply, do away with the block times of 10 minutes. What if they're 20 minutes? Would have there five minutes? Let's just like ignore that for a second and just focus on the monetary. network that enables the money to perform financial services and achieve things like settlement and clearance and cash finality. And when you look at it and you look at additive properties like the Lightning Network and layers on top, it's actually the most impressive monetary network in human history. And it's not particularly close. It's a monetary network that's cheaper. It's faster. It's global. It's the most inclusive monetary network of all time. It works for all eight billion

Starting point is 00:19:48 people inherently assuming a low latency internet connection. Oh, and by the way, it's open. So you cannot compete with it ever. You can't gate keep it. There's no central party that can control. And that is the most impressive monetary network of all time. And so one of the things, what strike was at the time when I first created the MVP, the very minimal product, was, hey, can we use the network without succumbing to some of the downsides and the risks of the asset? Can I literally, not capital B, lowercase B, divide them, but quite literally technologically divide them? Because growing up, working on Bitcoin and being really intimately familiar, I'm 27 now. I've been in Bitcoin for almost a decade. And a lot of the problems in the past

Starting point is 00:20:35 of using Bitcoin and payments is people trying to access this monetary network and make use and benefit of the monetary network, but having to deal with the asset. First and foremost, no one's incentivized to spend Bitcoin. Why? Because if you hold it, you grow in purchasing power. It grows in value against the dollar over a long period of time. Second, in the United States, it's taxes property, right? So it's a very onerous tax consequence to spend it and realize gains. Third, it's an accounting nightmare. Four, you have to be technically savvy enough to position yourself to actually use the monetary network and gain benefit. It has this laundry list of reasons where that'll just use my visa card. So the insight that we had at strike was, what do you have to be?

Starting point is 00:21:15 if we removed Bitcoin the asset from the basic level experience? What if I made your chase checking account or your Visa debit card are any form of cash collateral interoperable with this monetary network? So you get the benefits of global instant cash finality that's cheaper, faster. There's no concept of MDR. There's no concept of interchange as an acquirer. Oh, and it's open. So our app would get better every single day, whether I wrote a line of code or not, because the network is constantly improving at an exponential rate. What if I was able to achieve that? That would be one of the more fascinating financial experiences and ultimately over a long period of time, the best financial experience ever. And so that's what strike is. And what the president of El Salvador did,

Starting point is 00:22:03 in more or less words, is understand strike and then just pitched it to his country, which is great. But it's the concept that you can gain benefit from an open monetary network that's cheaper, faster, better, baseline inclusive, gives you the free market competition and optionality that every consumer would dream of and enables a society of choice. You choose how private you want to be. Choose the color of the app. Choose what fee structure you want. You have unlimited optionality, right?

Starting point is 00:22:33 You aren't exposed to the volatility of asset. You aren't exposed to realizing any capital gains. You aren't exposed to having to custody and having to be technically savvy enough, having to sacrifice on potential upside of your savings by having to spend it on coffee. So you get all the benefits of the best monetary network in human history while retaining the benefits of the asset or not having to be exposed to some of the downsides of using any payments. Hopefully that made sense. But it's a true division. And that is what strike is. And then I think El Salvador is trying to achieve the same thing, but just in a different context.

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Starting point is 00:27:37 with a person who was a vendor there at the beach, and I was, I had the Venmo app on my smartphone, and I tried to spend dollars or send them dollars over Venmo, there's a gatekeeper, limitation for me to be able to do that, correct? But with Strike, using Bitcoin and the Lightning Network as the back end rails, that limitation is no longer there. So I bank at Chase. My Chase checking account is my preferred cash collateral on strike. Now, all that fanciness means is like everyone links their bank account to Venmo, link your bank account to strike. And so I have a U.S. dollar balance on strike that's associated to my bank account. I want to, up to Papusa lady in El Salvador.

Starting point is 00:28:23 And I wanted a cheese Papusa. The lady showed me an open network interoperable QR code, which was a Lightning Network invoice. It was a Bitcoin QR code that any app that implemented the same payment standard could scan. There's probably hundreds of thousands of them out there. Probably tens of thousands known, probably thousands of work, whatever,

Starting point is 00:28:45 but they're a million, right? And Strike allowed me to scan it, although I was holding dollars. And what would happen is I scan it and let's say it was a $5 for Pousa, hit pay. Strike would debit $5 for my Chase account, live converts into Bitcoin, and then executes the payment for me under the hood unbeknownst to me. And we achieve final clearance and settlement with no concept of MDR, interchange, or anything. And the Pooose lady gets her $5 worth of Bitcoin that she requested. And so my U.S. dollars that were sitting in Chicago here at Chase Bank were interoperable and used to execute and achieve a consumer merchant payment in El Salvador. Now, the amazing thing

Starting point is 00:29:29 is there were like 10 different wallets that were being used in this town. Any of them could have scanned and paid it. And then, oh, by the way, Bitcoin is a bare instrument that's natively digital. And so it achieves physical settlement. No sense of credit on these monetary networks. It's physical. And so then the other key insight into this is that Bitcoin is a physical bare instrument. It's natively digital. So there's no sense of credit in this monetary network is that you're achieving physical cash finality. And the reason that that's important is then it's a bare instrument that could be exchanged back into dollars, right? And so to complete the user story, which is strike remittance or strike in commerce and what's happening in El Salvador is you can take

Starting point is 00:30:16 cash collateral, so a checking account or a dollar balance or whatever credit card points, something that a user likes to store and hold value in, they can issue a payment, it gets live converted into Bitcoin, uses this monetary network rails, which achieves instant, virtually free cash finality globally. And then as soon as it reaches its destination physically as a bare instrument, you can convert it back into dollars, euros, whatever cash collateral that the destination would like. And you're now just using a more novel monetary network to escrow value, cheaper, faster, better, more global, inclusive, and open. And when you compare it to the Visa Network, you compare it to the ACH Network, you compare it to

Starting point is 00:30:54 the Western Union Network. It's better in every sense. And it's even better. And if I were to walk into a Dunkin' Donuts here in the United States, but it's way better than what was in El Salvador, which is, you know, nothing. And most people have smartphones and devices to accept this one. Yes. everyone has a Facebook account, not only in El Salvador, in the world, right?

Starting point is 00:31:18 Facebook on Android devices, there's over 5 billion installs. They've almost got the entire planet on the thing. So everyone has a smartphone. Everyone has an internet connection. And now we have a digital asset and an open digital monetary network, which is, yeah, a whole other topic. And I think the really key point there is if the Papusa lady wanted to have the payment received in dollars because maybe her expenses, you know, maybe she's just barely profitable and she has some type of fixed expense, her electrical expenses in dollars, and she

Starting point is 00:31:52 needs to make sure that she has that amount. She can accept it in dollars even though Bitcoin was used as the rails to basically get it there. Correct. Yeah. So the strike product today, you can make any Bitcoin or Lightning Network payment with dollars. You can receive any Bitcoin or Lightning Network payment as dollars, right? So you have cash that's natively interoperable with this monetary network. And then if you combine the two, what you have is two parties that are separate from each other that can initiate a payment with dollars and then receive the payment as dollars and use this bare instrument that's able to achieve cash finality, cheaper, faster, better on this new novel open monetary network, just used under the hood to achieve clearance.

Starting point is 00:32:39 You don't need Visa anymore. You don't need any monetary network anymore. And it's infinitely scalable. It's open. It's just one of the more like crazy advancements for money as a technology in human history. I mean, I really don't think people appreciate what we're living through right now. And hopefully I'm alive for when the world kind of does. But maybe I won't be.

Starting point is 00:33:01 I mean, it's that big of a deal. Hey, so it seems like every week you got a monster announcement. This week, you had another monster announcement. Tell us what you got. I try my best. So at Strike, we announced the Bitcoin tab, which carries actual like long-tail vision. But in the immediate, we're going to allow people to buy Bitcoin for no cost outside of the market spread. So what that means is we get charged a market spread to execute purchase at market. And we're just passing that cost on to the consumer. So right now, it's below 30 basis points, so 0.3%. And as volume grows and hits a threshold, which we probably will

Starting point is 00:33:43 exceed even with our beta white list, it'll be below 10 basis points, so 0.1%. And that's explosive and amazing because relative to existing services like Coinbase, which can exceed 4%, it really is the shot heard around the world in retail purchasing of Bitcoin. And actually, this carries is much more depth than what my blog post and the media and stuff. But I think acquiring Bitcoin should be free. I think it's a race to the bottom. You can't build a protective business selling open source money. And I expedited that race to zero rather quickly with purposeful intent. Just so I understand, Jack, so it's not exactly zero. It's 0.1%, which is 40x lower than any exchange is offering right now. Is that correct? Right. And, you know, in a dream world, our revenues are

Starting point is 00:34:36 killing it in other facets of the business. And I'd love to subsidize a truly free experience of buying Bitcoin. But there is a cost to acquire Bitcoin at market. And that is any asset in any market, is you have to buffer in a market spread to ensure that you're covered on execution. And so the market spread that we get charged to execute your order, we pass that cost onto the consumer. But right now, that'll never exceed 0.3%. And probably by the end of July, that will never exceed 0.1% hopefully. Wow. So people are accustomed to go into all the major exchanges. They're paying, like you said, up to 4% fees at various locations. So now I just opened your app. And I think a lot of people have been doing this with the cash app or they'll log on.

Starting point is 00:35:25 And if they just want to smash by for a $100 order or a $50 order or whatever, it's just you can kind of immediately get your cash into the app from your bank account. And then you can immediately put in an order. Now you're offering this on strike. But you're doing it for 40x lower fees than the major exchanges. Yep. And so there's a lot to unpack here. And so you pause me if I'm a man to lose you, but there's a lot to unpack. So there's a few really important points.

Starting point is 00:35:56 One, we're not making any money or revenue at all, very intentionally. Bitcoin and selling open source money, it's a race to the bottom. That's not a defensible business. And you even saw that in the equities market. Like now Robin Hood allows you commission free trade. You cannot defend against that. And when Coinbase went public, that was the very big criticism is how are they going to defend their business model, Coinbase with $1.8 billion of revenue in Q1, 94% of that was

Starting point is 00:36:25 fees to acquire digital assets. And almost all of that was Bitcoin. And so how were they going to survive knowing that this market's going to drive itself to zero? And we already began to see that. Cash app, Venmo, Robin Hood, they started to come in, offer the same service for a little bit cheaper. Coinbase was at 2.9%. Cash up and Benmo came in relative 2.2 to 2.5%. And then the swan bitcoins come in or the river financials come in below that with also different value propositions, but the pricing and it continued to go down. Now, for me, it was a no-brainer for strike to do this and offer it for zero outside of the market spread. And instead of go, oh, well, we'll do it for 0.9%. No, we'll go straight to zero. Now, here's why. It's really important. The biggest companies in the world are open network companies, okay? Facebook, Twitter, Google. What I mean by that is they operate on the internet. That's their open network. And their target audience is everyone on the planet. That's what allows them to be as big as they are. It's one of the inherent properties that allows a company to be that big, Amazon. These companies have the target customer of everyone on the planet. Now, someone like a Facebook, their problem is that they're

Starting point is 00:37:43 They don't have an inherent business model. Okay. And so their business model becomes acting against the best interest of their user, their customer is their user. Zuckerberg appears in front of Congress two times a quarter. He surfs with an American flag on the Fourth of July. He's the most hated man on the planet. He has to tarnish his brand.

Starting point is 00:38:02 Facebook has a terrible brand. Jack Dorsey and Twitter, unfortunately, I think Jack Dorsey is a good guy. I'd like to believe he's a good guy. Has a terrible brand. Why? They have to compromise against their user. infringe on their privacy, sell their data behind their back. And so they are this open network business, which allows them to be as big as they are,

Starting point is 00:38:20 but they're kind of capped and they tarnish their brand, tarnish their reputation, and have a huge problem of achieving more than what they are because they don't have an inherent business model. Strike actually is also an open network company. We plan on servicing all 8 billion people on the planet. Our open network is Bitcoin. But we're a financial services firm. We know how we're going to make money.

Starting point is 00:38:44 And it is in the best interest of our users. If the biggest retailers in the world start processing and achieving finality as an acquirer on the Lightning Network and they're paying 10 basis points instead of 2.9 with Visa, we're making money. They're making money. The consumer now has the optionality of a free market and scanning an open network interoperable QR code. Everyone wins.

Starting point is 00:39:07 We don't have to compromise against our user. And so in turn, I say all this to say, strike has a very unique opportunity to be the biggest company in the world. It's in our DNA. We're an open network business that has a known business model and can act in the best interest of our user. And it also allows us to do amazing things. Like, I think strike will end up being one of the most powerful consumer brands of all time, akin to an Apple, akin to a Nike, because of these inherent DNA properties. It's what Bitcoin enables and allows us to do.

Starting point is 00:39:36 It's because of Bitcoin. It's because of my team. right, it's because of our investors, it's because of our partners, but ultimately it's because of Bitcoin. Now, long rant, I say all that to say, Coinbase whiffed on this big time. Twitter, for example, you're seeing that they're trying to solve this in real time. You know, if Jack Dorsey's listening to this, I hope I'm not revealing. I've never talked to him about this or anything, just to be clear. But Twitter is now migrating away from the platform for the world to converse as people, and they're now treating their users as creators and having Twitter

Starting point is 00:40:08 spaces and now having a tip jar for a creator's marketplace and trying to backdoor their way into finance and realign themselves with their users and fix this inherent problem that they're an open network company that compromises against the best interest of the people that use their service. So Facebook and the same thing with trying to get into FinTech and issue their own. These companies are trying to backdoor and patch this together. Now, Coinbase messed this up. Brian Armstrong whiffed. And so when I call them out, I'm doing it like, you know, Obviously, he took company public. He achieved great things.

Starting point is 00:40:41 He built a lot of wealth. And so kudos to him. But I'm saying this because I'm very confident. I'm not saying this to like get a headline or I'm not overmarketing. He whiffed. And so what he somehow did is he missed this. He missed this. It showed a very fundamental misunderstanding of why Bitcoin is important,

Starting point is 00:40:59 misunderstanding of Bitcoin the monetary network and why it's going to change the world. Instead, he recreated an equity brokerage, but for Bitcoin. And he saw the innovation as creating like a casino of a bunch of coins in the same way that the NASDAQ lists a bunch equities. And now all of a sudden, Coinbase is a terrible brand. They act against the best interest of their users. They act against the best interest of Bitcoin core, the Bitcoin community and the very people that helped build his wealth in the first place.

Starting point is 00:41:28 And he's found himself in the same problem that Jack Dorsey has, that Mark Zuckerberg has. And it's a shame. And so what I'm doing very flagrant. in taking the time to explain all of this is I'm offering it for free. Why am I offering? Oh, Jack, why are you charging 10 base points? No, because I want to make a point that I'm doing this the right way. I'm acting in the best interest in my users. I'm taking advantage that I can build the best brand in the world. I'm taking advantage that my users can be my friends. And it's a huge strategic point on what strike is about and how I see the long-term viability

Starting point is 00:42:00 of my company and how I see the best financial experience on the planet evolving is that you have to align your best interest with your users. Bitcoin allows that very unique opportunity while allowing us to still retain a target audience of all 8 billion people on the planet. And so I'm trying to margin call Coinbase and all of the like that built the core fundamentals and basis of their business the wrong way. And I want a margin call and say, okay, I'm expediting this market to zero. You thought you were going to have five years for the race to the bottom to complete and you'd come up with a business model? No, you got five days. I found a flaw. I found a flaw. it's like the big short. I'm calling your bluff. Let's go. So check up. Come play in my court. And I think

Starting point is 00:42:43 it's too late. So end rant. And at this point, I think you would agree with this, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. When you're offering all these shit coins, alt coins on their exchanges, that becomes a liability when you're trying to go up against another entity yourself who's offering the purchase of Bitcoin at, next 10 basis points. Like all of that infrastructure, all that technical expertise, all the forks, all that stuff becomes a burden and a frictional drag on their exchange, correct? It's a huge problem. So it's a burden. It's a drag on the exchange. It's a drag on the engineering team. It's a huge liability. But you have to understand from a high level,

Starting point is 00:43:31 he's made a mistake. And I'm sorry, Brian, although not really. But for whoever, whoever's made the mistake, right? It's a fundamental misunderstanding of why Bitcoin's important. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how Bitcoin scales, of why the monetary network is so valuable and how what happened in the equities market and it's a race to the bottom, misunderstood all of that completely. He's trying to do is he's trying to recreate the equities market and recreate the regulatory moat that exists within it and that it's really hard to compete with a lot of the existing

Starting point is 00:43:59 exchanges because of the licensing, because of the backdoor deals, because of the insider trading with Stevie Cohen and all these guys are protective over what they've created over the last 30 years. She's trying to do the same thing. You see headlines. He's meeting with the whatever institution. He's Coinbase spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lawyers and who knows what they're doing behind closed doors.

Starting point is 00:44:16 And he's trying to say, yeah, everyone may be able to buy and sell Bitcoin on cash out, but no one's listing Algaran coin or left sock coin that uses the blockchain to make putting on my left sock in the morning more efficient somehow. No one can do that because they didn't talk to this regulator. He's trying to recreate that environment. He just whiffed. He totally missed the point. And so what he's also ended up doing is created a leverage long position on a world in which

Starting point is 00:44:42 there's a coin for everything. And if that concept fails and it turns out all coins are just an arbitrage on the trend and they have a lifespan that isn't much longer than today, then he's lost. What am I doing? The opposite. I'm building a long position proxied on Bitcoin being the core nucleus of the best financial experience in the world. and your revenues and your profits and your innovation comes in on acquire being able to achieve

Starting point is 00:45:09 financial clearance for 10 basis points and not 300 with Visa. I know it's a race to the bottom to buy and acquire open source money. And so why not charge zero now? Right. Like, I know all this stuff. I'm playing 40 chess with this guy and he's playing bingo. Dude, let's get into this. Okay.

Starting point is 00:45:26 So a person who would be hearing this who is a person who owns alt coins is looking at it and saying the whole defy thing, you're missing the boat there, Jack. Like, this is just for a new money that you're optimizing for, but there's going to be this whole other thing with all these digital tokens. You hear this argument all the time. What do you say to that person? You take this in a lot of directions. Let's go to El Salvador.

Starting point is 00:45:54 Why don't El Salvador implement defy? I'll tell you exactly why. One, let's revisit the monetary expansion problem that they try to solve with central banks and the inherent rapid inflation that they experience and decreasing and purchasing power that's outside of their control. It's a huge problem. How do they fix that? They subscribe to a hard money monetary policy distributed and defended by an open network,

Starting point is 00:46:17 right? That's Bitcoin. Now, what if they also added Ethereum? What if they also added Al-Garand coin? What if they also added left sock coin? What if I go to bed and realize, man, a cold pillow is better than a warm pillow. and tomorrow invent cold pillow coin. That is unintended spillover levels of inflation, which we have today. That does not solve the problem of subscribing to a hard money monetary policy.

Starting point is 00:46:45 Anyone in the world can create a coin and imply inflation to your balance sheet, assuming that there's a world where they're all valuable, which is what Coinbase is thinking and what all coiners think. That is a flawed mental model. Now, the other, we need an open monetary network where there's one universal open standard that anyone can subscribe to. And by plugging into it and complying with the specification that lives on GitHub, you are natively interoperable with everyone in the world. And you get all the properties of cash finality, of instant clearance, of open network effects and economies of scale out of the gate. That solves your financial inclusion problem. That all of a sudden, quote unquote, banks the unbanked out of nowhere, right?

Starting point is 00:47:32 And you get the properties of this robust, secure, base layer that is Bitcoin and that has all the resources and engineers behind it. Now, if you also then introduce the Ethereum network, also the Al-Gran network, also the cold pillow blockchain network, now you've recreated independent monetary networks that are not interoperable. A financial service has to infinitely integrate and expose themselves to tremendous amounts of risk that they cannot keep up with. And you have a broken financial system where there's ACH, there's SEPA, there's Visa, there's PayPal, there's Square, and you have a bunch of people in the world that will inevitably not have access to what ends up being the more popular and dominant monetary networks, which is 70% of El Salvador.

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Starting point is 00:51:36 All right. Back to the show. What you're getting at is simplicity is vital for the network effect and enticing more participants into that network. Yeah, what I'm getting at is Bitcoin, the asset solves one of humanity's longest stated problems, which is hard money, which is savings technology. which is a monetary policy that cannot be construed by a central individual, party, government, bank, anyone.

Starting point is 00:52:01 And then what I'm getting at is Bitcoin, the network solves instant physical, bare instrument finality at virtually no cost that's open, global, ultimately inclusive to all and cannot be competed with because it's an open network that comes with economies of scale, network effects that are just unprecedented. And those are the two things that Bitcoin has forever changed the world for. Centuries to come, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grand kid is going to benefit from. And alt coins act against the best interest. And if all coins are truly to exist forever, then those things aren't solved and we actually are at ground zero. And so inherently,

Starting point is 00:52:37 if you have one brain cell, you understand that alt coins don't make any sense and they never have. And they're an arbitrage on the trend because there are people that don't understand that, but want to be involved. And there's an arbitrage opportunity there and that I can create pink wood flag coin and tell you why it's important in a blog post because you don't understand these concepts and you're willing to buy it. But the ability to create pink-wood flag coin was much easier 10 years ago than it is today. It'll be much harder 10 years from now than it is today. And eventually won't be possible because markets are efficient and that arbitrage opportunity will close. But all we're living in is an inefficient market where there's an arbitrage opportunity

Starting point is 00:53:13 where there's unprecedented interest because the Federal Reserve has perverted risk tolerance against all assets. So how much is a Doge coin worth? I don't know. I got to get rid of my dollars. Do I understand what it does? No. So I'm willing to pay a whole thing. $100 for one, maybe 10 years ago. Am I willing to pay $1 for one? Maybe today. How about in 10 years from now? No, that gap's going to close.

Starting point is 00:53:33 And then you're going to be left with Bitcoin and the poor problems that has solved for humanity, which is arguably some of the longest dated wants. And sorry, I'm passionate, but that is my opinion. I think everybody's loving it. I hope so. Okay, so this was the most popular question out of the 447 questions that hit the feed this People who heard about the El Salvador announcement, it's just natural. The next question is, is who else is contacting you?

Starting point is 00:54:03 What other countries are pinging strike to have a conversation based on what they're seeing in El Salvador, based on everything you just described? Yeah. Here's my response to this one. Obviously, tricky and sensitive question for, I assume, you know, people can assume what. I want to be clear, again, I don't have a commercial relationship with the country. It's very important that the country doesn't favor me or strike in any way, not only because there's implied legal risk there, but more importantly, for the free market. You know, we, myself, the president and the world should want El Salvador to support a free market environment where everyone's invited to compete and there's no favorite. Right. And so I want to make that very, very clear, is that this is a free market. El Salvador is allowed to use our API, just like anyone in the world is allowed to use our API. So now with that being said, yeah, no, I mean, other countries have reached out. And because it's a really valuable problem set to solve, not going to mention any by name.

Starting point is 00:55:08 And it's also an open monetary network. And so I would like to think that they reach out because strike offers one of the more competitive experiences on top of the world's first open monetary network and can do. some of the most impressive financial services in human history. I would like to think as a company, we've reached that level. So, you know, we're going to try and service customers just like a papousal lady, just like a president, just like Russell Lekung in the NFL, just like Sequin Barclay, just like a lot of musicians, just like any, just like my stepmom, just like anyone, and open and entertaining all conversations. But more than two countries?

Starting point is 00:55:49 A lot are interested. I mean, listen, like, if you're a sitting president, what problems are you trying to solve? Probably monetary expansion, the macro environment, your position relative to the dollar, and the quality of life of the people living within your country. So here's my gotcha way around this. So in El Salvador, Strike is the number one app in the app store. for the country. Are you number one in any other country? And if not, which countries do you see your app trending in a very aggressive kind of way? We're actually not actively launched in

Starting point is 00:56:33 any other countries, actively beta testing, sure. And our roadmap to launch, you know, for everyone listening, I do, I walk a dangerously fine line where I don't want to be too public for obvious reasons. But I also, I love those that are supportive of strike. and everyone on Bitcoin, Twitter, and this whole community. And so I, you know, I want to be very transparent and vocal about everything. So, no, I mean, I can say we plan to aggressively scale in the developing world more and more. Like what we achieved in El Salvador, I think, was no mistake. It was very aligned with the company's vision and intention of enabling economic freedom. And then we also have very big plans in the developed world and what we've done in the

Starting point is 00:57:13 United States. We have an aggressive roadmap here in the U.S. We still have our visa card to launch. you have a direct deposit product where publish the blog post whenever I feel like it. And then we're going to do the same in Europe and the same in the UK. So say that. I'm not going to commit to anything, especially nowadays, I have to be very careful of a general counsel now that is always nervous when I go on podcasts and get fired up. It's getting very real, Jack. Very real.

Starting point is 00:57:42 Talk to us about the vision that you have for this direct deposit and how that kind of plays into, from a user's perspective, walk us through what that experience would be like. It's super simple, right? I mean, you just line up your direct deposit to strike, just like you would to your traditional tracking account that you do today. I would give you an account and a routing number. The unique feature set that we believe to be important is you're allowed to then decide what percentage of that direct deposit gets auto-converted and deposit into Bitcoin on the application. Again, we're optimizing for the best financial experience, not the best Bitcoin wallet, not the best lightning wallet. I think I can build the best financial experience in the entire

Starting point is 00:58:27 planet. I think of the core nucleus of that is access to Bitcoin at virtually no costs or as cheap as I can afford and in a variety of ways in rewards from a card and buying it in direct deposit conversion. And so, yeah, I think Bitcoin is the best savings technology in the world. I think non-working capital that you get from your paycheck should be saved and preserved an asset that acts in your best interest, and that's Bitcoin. And we want to make that experience great. And so that launches pretty much whenever I have a second to publish another blog post and so excited about it.

Starting point is 00:59:00 And that's why the Bitcoin tab lays down this foundation that not only allows you to buy Bitcoin, but allows you to interact with the asset. And we plan on a variety of ways. From a priority standpoint, and you're just looking at all these things that you know you just got to move out on. For you, Jack, what are some of the top priorities for you? You know, what's really funny is when I pitched the company in this whole idea, I closed the seed round April 1st, 2020. So it's just over a year. Singh had any funding, and I was allowed to hire at one person.

Starting point is 00:59:37 So obviously, a lot of growth has been experienced and it's been fast. But I'll never forget, I told who's now my C-O, you know, give me 18 months and I'll have achieved this vision, I promise. I know it sounds crazy, but I got, you know, the hardest working guy you've ever met, I'm a soldier, just trust me on this. And it hasn't been 18 months yet. And within that 18 months was achieving cross-border payments over lightning, achieving a visa card, direct deposit, and everything you're seeing today.

Starting point is 01:00:06 So I would like to complete that roadmap. And that involves launching in Europe. That involves the direct deposit product here in the United States. That involves our Visa card. That also involves exposing our API publicly. You know, I think that was a very big turning point in Facebook's lifespan is when they opened up the API. And Mark Zuckerberg realized that he couldn't hire everyone on the planet to build everything that deserved to be built on the world's best social network.

Starting point is 01:00:32 And I feel the same way in allowing people to build tooling on top of the infrastructure we have. Is that already live? It's live with select partners that will probably be announced relatively soon, but it's not open to the public just yet. If I had to guess in priority order, it would be something like direct deposit, the euro in Europe, the API, and which comes with like a slew of tools for the acquiring side. So if I'm a developer, just walk us through on the API front. Would it be similar to like, you go to like a small website and you can check out by using Amazon, your Amazon account to pay for something, but yet you could do this with Strike. Is that what that would be? Yeah, exactly. Well, think of it this way is that I think the core innovation at Strike is, again, allowing cash collateral to be interoperable with this open monetary network, this new novel innovation of monetary. network. And what that then enables is the best financial experience in the planet. And so we've overinvested in that experience for the consumer, made a particular statement to go global, because I think

Starting point is 01:01:44 the fact that we are an open network company is one of the biggest upsides to the business is that we can service all 8 billion people. And so we should be aggressive about it. But all that to say, what if you could get that tool set and do whatever you want? Like people are obsessed with DCA for, you know, appropriate reasons. You could build a tool that DCA. for you every second. You could build your own paywall tool. You could integrate with Shopify. You could build it into your own website. I mean, Stripe with a P, not strike, but Stripe with a P. There's a $100 billion plus dollar private company. They don't have a consumer app. It's just an API. And so think about if we expose that to the world, what we would enable the world to do.

Starting point is 01:02:25 And the insight, it's actually a Mark Zuckerberg interview that I find fascinating. As he said, Initially, you think, keep everything in-house, hire all the smartest people and try and build everything you can. And what he realized is that's never achievable and actually acts against the best interest of innovation. What if you take the opposite approach is you're never going to be able to hire everyone that has an idea, right? What if you just open up the API and let the world build with you?

Starting point is 01:02:50 And that's what I want. I want the world to be able to utilize what we've done internally and build whatever they'd like. And so, yeah, check out on a website, paywall tools, auto-d-cise. and probably thousands of ideas that I can never come up with because I'm dumber than a lot of the world, right? So, Jack, when I think about the approval process for you to get the app listed in El Salvador, walk us a little bit through that process from a policy or just a regulatory standpoint,

Starting point is 01:03:21 like the timeframe that's associated with it. So people kind of have an appreciation for the struggle that's associated with just getting an app listed in a country like this. And then it'll help people kind of understand how the process takes when you're going into other countries as well. Yeah. Are you being very polite in my ability to excuse myself of not being launched all over the planet? Because I did sift through the questions below your tweet and I did see a, you know, when this country from probably all countries. So no, I mean, the answer to your question is it's obviously very difficult. One of the problems that has been birthed from the division of the world generally,

Starting point is 01:04:01 and the fact that we have borders and different countries and different jurisdictions and different regulatory bodies, but then also different financial infrastructure. We have SEPA, we have ACH, is that there's just different rule sets. There's different compliance. There's MLD-5, there's MSBMTLs, and applying to them, working with different regulators, getting approvals. It's a very complex thing. And then on top of that, once you do, is integrating with,

Starting point is 01:04:26 the local financial system and ensuring a great experience is only additive to the difficulty. So, oh, the process is complicated, especially a place like El Salvador, it's extraordinarily unclear. In fact, I didn't even know really what I was doing if it was allowed until I met the government and they were like, oh, this is awesome, dude, this is sick. Because I went into the meeting like, oh, man, am I going to go to jail? Because it wasn't really clear. So anyways, it's complicated, relatively unknown. Obviously, what we're doing is new and a first. But all that to say, I'm obviously tremendously committed and will stop at quite literally nothing to get it all done.

Starting point is 01:05:11 So actively working on it and working through it. But not easy, say the least. Well, if we do have any foreign representatives from regulatory bodies that are listening to the conversation and you want a green light jab, Jack in your country. Definitely. You hit them up. I thought of one more thing. The indie race.

Starting point is 01:05:33 I mean, if this doesn't just demonstrate the people like how busy this guy is, he was the guy behind the Indy car, the Bitcoin Indy car. And this was just something else that you just happened to pop out during all this other stuff that's going on. Talk to us about the experience. What was the most memorable part of it for you? And maybe something that kind of surprised you about the whole thing that maybe people would find interesting or a funny story or something like that. Yeah. So first and foremost, speaking to how busy I am and such, it also implies how busy we are as a company, which implies my team. And their takeaway should be how tremendous group of individuals strike it really is.

Starting point is 01:06:19 It's comprised of the best of the best and they care more than anyone. I think that that is the key ingredient to developing and delivering on change is just caring enough to actually do it. And these people care more than anyone in the world. So shout out to them. Oh, my God, it is an amazing experience, right? And I think what it says is, again, we're building an amazing consumer brand where whether you're a president, whether you're an IndyCar driver, whether you're an NFL player, whether you're a barista, whether you're a Pupusa salesman in El Salvador, you call Jack, you call strike. You don't call Brian Armstrong. He doesn't understand open source development and the Lightning Network. And so I think it was great. And I field all of these calls.

Starting point is 01:06:57 And the best part to me was the message that Ed Carpenter and his team wanted to deliver, they wanted to race for more than potato chips and Monster Energy drink. And what does that mean from a high level? That means that they wanted to plug into this open system and this cultural phenomenon, although they aren't technologists, although they aren't a financial services firm, although they aren't an acquire paying 3% of Visa. They race cars, but that doesn't mean that they can't plug in and be additive to an open system and to a movement that means tremendous amounts to humanity. And it was an overwhelming sense of emotion and purpose that I got to live through this team.

Starting point is 01:07:36 I was just, I played the smallest role possible, which was, you know, like sketched a design in the car and ensured, you know, everything was put together and we can get it to open source devs. And there's, it was one of the coolest things in the world. I can say, I like to shout out, like, this is a great story for the listeners, Sequin Barclay. So shout out Sequin. He's become a tremendously close friend of mine. And he actually, so he jetted in that morning to make the national anthem. And it was meet him and Russell Cone.

Starting point is 01:08:07 And Russ is barking at the PNC bank car. And literally, it's like, how much Bitcoin do I have to give for you to take that dirty financial firm off your car? You guys are gross. You don't understand what you're representing. And they're like trying to shoe us away, like security. Just like trying to get this guy's six, eight, what, 300 something pounds. I mean, he's a monster. And so I got arguably the best running back in the NFL to my right, a Super Bowl winning tackle to my left. These guys collectively could bench a car and they're yelling at the PNC bank car. Say Kwan's standing next to me for the national anthem. It's the Bitcoin

Starting point is 01:08:44 car next to the PNC bank car. So you've got a hooded up. Bitcoin developer and a NFL running back for the New York giant standing next to like some suited up nerdy banker and some dweeb wearing a PNC bank suit. And so then Sequin, after that, jetted back to New York to make practice. And so if that doesn't exemplify the true phenomenon that Bitcoin is, and it doesn't matter who you are, Bitcoin reminds us that we're much more similar than we are different. Seekwon, yeah. Sequin probably lives in a big house, probably dates awesome girls.

Starting point is 01:09:18 and drives nice cars. He cares about Bitcoin just like you and I. And that was so cool for me to experience. It was amazing. And so shout out to Ed Carpenter. And on the tail end of it, now we have seven figures to donate to open source development. And that's probably the most important takeaway. So it was awesome and proud to play the small role I did.

Starting point is 01:09:40 Did Russell take the gas out of the PNC car? Probably. Or maybe they took the gas out themselves. themselves when they realized if they didn't. How pathetic they were. A big lineman was going to find him after the race. No, Russ is obviously the man. And what he's done for Bitcoin alone is so impressive.

Starting point is 01:10:01 Yeah, I'm such a fan of him. I got a chance to meet him down in Miami and we had a chance to talk. He's a best man. He's amazing. Such a nice guy. Just all around great person. All right. The NCAA is, you know, now it's all the rules are.

Starting point is 01:10:18 changing as far as them being able to receive payments. I would imagine this younger, fresher crowd is excited about Bitcoin, just like you and me. Did you notice how I like slid that I'm young like you as well, even though I'm not even close? But I would think this is a big opportunity. And when you think about the presence that so many of these influencers have and how many people they're able to reach out and touch because of their follower base, I just see this as a massive opportunity. Are you working with any of them in addition to people like Russell that we've already talked about? What's going on in this space? Oh, man, you're too smart for me. Put me on the spot. Yeah, we may be working with an athlete or two and involved in what's happening

Starting point is 01:11:02 because I think we should because I think it embodies who we are as a company, who I am as a man and what's happening with the NCAA. And finally, this is a long, outdated rule change. And So I'm happy to see it. And I want to be involved and I want to be helpful. And so some folks have reached out. We've done some reaching out. And definitely will be involved and want to continue to be involved and be helpful. So leave it at that. You know, to be honest with you, people that are listening to this, if you know these types of people in your life or maybe you have one friend that's really kind of gone, this is huge. Like, if they have a million followers on Twitter or Instagram or whatever and they just even

Starting point is 01:11:46 start talking about this in a small way, it has just a massive impact to just get all this knowledge out there about Bitcoin and about the community. And I just, I'm real excited about what that means. Here's the deal. This goes back to the Sequin, to the Russell Coons, is that, you know, athletes operate as independent brands because they should. They're independent businesses. You know, these guys treat them as such, these guys being the NFL, the NBA, these organizations, they prey on the bodies of these individuals.

Starting point is 01:12:17 If Russ tears his ACL, they're never going to talk to him again. They price their contracts in dollars, right? Like, they're the whole spiel. And same for collegiate athletes, but even more so because they don't operate in such a lucrative market like the NFL. And so this is a huge opportunity for them to lean into the fact that they are independent businesses. and they do build these big brands and these big followings and they get to monetize that. And Bitcoin should be a huge part of that. Persisting and storing wealth, the average NFL career is just over three years.

Starting point is 01:12:48 I don't care what you do. That's not generational wealth, no matter if you're Tom Brady or practice team player that's on the punt team. And then even more so, as a collegiate athlete, who knows what can happen. You can get injured. You can have a change of heart and passion. You can want to pursue interests like being historian and being able to monetize yourself as an independent business and persistence store that wealth and something like Bitcoin is a fundamental human right in my opinion. And I'm just really passionate to help them out in enabling

Starting point is 01:13:16 that. All right, Jack, a handoff for people to learn more about you, strike, whatever, just fly away where you want to point people. Oh, I'm lesser concerned about me. You go to strike. The strike.me is a company website, download the app. And as I've hinted at, the current form of the application I'm tremendously proud of, but I think job not finished, as Kobe Bryant would say, we have a lot of work to do. And I probably have half a dozen announcements over the next call it 60 days that are tremendously exciting. So strike.combe, we're Ellen Strike on Twitter. And then my full name is all my handles. I wasn't smart enough to come up with some anonymous profile back in the day. So I'm Jack Muller's on Twitter. I'm Jack Millers everywhere. And I do end

Starting point is 01:14:06 these with, you know, it was not too long ago. I was a dropped out of college. Really did not know what to do with myself. And Bitcoin has allowed me to be passionate, ambitious, and contribute and play a small role in something that I think will forever change the world. And I'm so thankful for the community support in my work and all of the love and support I get and strike gets and just allowing me to be a part of this thing. I never take it for granted. So I just want to let everyone know that I love them and I'm appreciative of this journey that we're participating in together and hit me up at any time. I also want to highlight Jack Peters podcast, what Bitcoin did, where he interviewed you and you guys got into a lot of details about how the whole El Salvador thing

Starting point is 01:14:51 went down. I'm going to have a link to that in my show notes because I just thoroughly enjoyed that conversation and we'll have the links to the stuff that you highlighted as well. So I know you said that your name is Jack Mallors on all the platforms, but as far as I'm concerned, Fox Business has termed you Jack Ballers. Jack Ballers, thanks for coming on the show. It was an honor to have you here, and I really look forward to doing it again sometime in the future. Thank you, brother. Good to see you as always. Hey, so thanks for everybody listening to the show. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast app you're using. We really appreciate that. And if you

Starting point is 01:15:28 have time, leave us a review. So thanks for joining us this week. And we'll catch you next Wednesday. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or re-broadcasting. I don't know.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC034: Bitcoin as Legal Tender & Near-Zero Exchange Fees w/ Jack Mallers (Bitcoin Podcast)

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