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Did Strike.Global Just End Transaction Fees for the Entire Planet?
There is a new app making waves in the Bitcoin space. That app is called Strike.Global, it is a free, global, instant settlement payment technology built on Bitcoin. If all of those words in one sentence seems too good to be true, then you’re in the right place.
This article will cover who is behind the project, and how they can make this platform possible. Currently Strike is only available in the United States, however Strike is deploying in other countries under its new brand Strike Global.
What does this new application bring to the Bitcoin ecosystem?
Jack Mallers Brings you Strike.Global
Who is Jack Mallers? He is the CEO of Strike, and the core builder of the Zap Wallet. Jack is an early contributor to the lightning network. This early exposure to the lightning network has given him the insight required to pursue the killer app that he is building now, Strike. Jack is a top 30 under 30 individual in 2021, and has raised $3.5 million in capital in order to develop the Strike platform.
Jack is one of those Bitcoin influencers that you’re going to want to keep an eye on. He has set his sights on one of the most disruptive use cases of the Bitcoin and Lightning Network.
The Purpose of Strike
So what is the goal and purpose of Strike? The goal of Strike is ambitious, but attainable. It is to build a global, instant, and free payment service for the entire planet.
The biggest feature of this platform is that sending money anywhere in the world will be free. This is the ultimate competitive factor when put up against existing payment networks such as Western Union, or PayPal.
Think about Google searches, they are free. This is one of the ways Google has managed to achieve this near monopoly on internet search traffic. Payment services all over the planet will simply fail to compete with a service that can offer a better service, for free.
A Unified Payment Interface
Every international payment processor and remittance service is at risk at losing market share due to the existence of Strike.
Jack Mallers makes this point by drawing attention to a paradigm shift that took place in India. There is a payment service in India called PayTM. At one point and time they had more or less the monopoly on digital payments in India. They thus, were a company worth multiple tens of billions of dollars. India implemented a digital payment standard called Universal Payment Interface (UPI). Implementing this standard across India forced all digital payment providers to conform to this standard.
Before UPI was implemented, PayTM was not “compatible” with other payment services. This means that I cannot send money from ServiceA to PayTM. After UPI was implemented, all payment services needed to conform to this universal payment standard.
PayTM lost billions of dollars of market share almost overnight. This happened because people were suddenly given the freedom to choose any platform they like, instead of conforming to a payment network that everyone else is using.
Unify World Payments
The western world and European countries are all still fragmented across a couple of major players; Ex. VISA and Mastercard. Whereas UPI was instantiated by the government, Jack Mallers aims to do something else with Strike.
Jack wants Strike to be the unified payment standard that is interoperable with every other payment network in the world. So instead of PayPal, Square, VISA, and Mastercard all being separate networks, Strike can be the glue that stitches them together.
The current glue that holds these payment networks together is your local banking institution. In many parts of the world, there is no banking infrastructure. This means that if you have your money on PayPal, it will be extremely difficult for you to pay someone through Square. Strike is the glue that connects not banks, but individuals to the payment networks of the world.
How Does Strike Work?
Strike manages to make international money transfer free by integrating with Bitcoin, and the Lightning Network. Sending money on Strike allows you to send USD into the application, and have someone on the other side receive a completely different FIAT currency instantly. What happens behind the scenes is a three step process.
- USD Sits in your Account. You want to send $10 to your friend in the UK. You hit send.
- The USD is converted into Bitcoin, and is sent to the UK using the Lightning Network.
- The Bitcoin is converted into GBP and deposited into the account of your friend.
All three steps happen in a matter of seconds, and for free. Jack Mallers explains this entire process on an episode of the WhatBitcoinDid Podcast.
Strike is Live in the States
Strike is already live in the United States. This is the proving ground. Making Strike work in the rest of the world is on orders of magnitude more complicated. The brand that is rolling out Strike on a global scale is Strike.Global. People in other countries may sign up for the BETA version of Strike.Global using this link.
Full disclosure, by using this link, you will give me, Keegan Francis, a bump up on the waiting list. Ultimately what this means is that I will be able to review Strike.Global and post it on CryptoVantage.com. It also means that you will be on the waiting list to use Strike. Don’t you want to be one of the first people on the planet to send money, in the form of Bitcoin, around the world at the speed of light?
