Bitcoin and the Lightning Network are moving payments globally

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Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast that dives deep into the stories, background and latest news of the biggest names in crypto.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of Strike, a bitcoin-based payment network and financial app that is trying to expand its reach into cross-border payments and remittance markets.

Last year, Mallers’ company raised $80 million in a Series B round to expand into that space, and today counts big companies like Visa, Clover and Fiserv among its partners.

“I think it’s about meeting consumers where they are and solving a problem for them,” Mallers said.

Mallers is also the CEO of Zap, a bitcoin investment and payments company that transacts on the Lightning Network, which is a second layer on Bitcoin’s blockchain that allows off-chain transactions between parties.

“We are a business involved in Bitcoin, but we don’t care about the price,” Mallers said. “We use Bitcoin and the Lightning Network for payments, so we actually use Bitcoin, the instrument, to move value around the world. But our customers use and receive dollars, or use and receive euros, or use and receive stablecoins.”

The service works if Bitcoin is $1 or $1 million, Mallers said. The company is not dependent on the price, but “uses it as a technological innovation in the payment world.”

We discussed Mallers’ background, how he entered the Bitcoin scene as a young adult, whether the Lightning Network can be better than the payment networks that exist today and how big players could enter the space. This episode was heavily focused on Bitcoin, so stick around.

We also went into:

• Lightning Network’s global potential
• El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin
• Creating new infrastructure to make Bitcoin more accessible
• The Future of the Strike and Bitcoin Ecosystems

“I think Lightning will serve as the single value transfer protocol for Earth,” Mallers said. “But, I think, as we develop at the beginning of this journey, the lowest hanging fruit is: how do you get fiscal value on planet Earth? That’s why we start there and focus there.”

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