Buckle up, folks! Bitcoin payments pioneer, Strike, is off to tropical climes with a mission to put the ‘bit’ in every ‘coin’. They’ve just blown the trumpet for a colossal expansion while waving adios to their old digs and saying ‘hola’ to a new HQ in sunny El Salvador, the world’s Bitcoin capital.
On May 19, Strike unfurled its plans for a global crusade into 65 juicy markets. And it’s not just the big leap across borders, they’re setting their sails for El Salvador – a Bitcoin lover’s paradise, where the mighty crypto is treated as good as gold.
CEO Jack Mallers, in a fireside chat at the glitzy Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, waxed eloquent about the sweet simplicity of the Strike app. Tired of juggling 1000 different cryptos or wrestling with opaque licensing regimes? Strike believes that there are billions of people craving a sleek, straightforward money app.
But, why this sudden pack-up-and-go attitude? As per Mallers, it’s the whiff of increasing regulatory fog and a dearth of clarity back home in the U.S. that nudged them to up sticks. The expansion into El Salvador, he hints, is a bold validation of Strike’s Bitcoin-first mantra amid a storm of lawsuits raining down on crypto firms from the SEC.
Meanwhile, back on home turf, the crypto firm is battling barricades in New York where the launch pad remains locked due to a pending BitLicense application. Despite these hurdles, Strike envisions spreading its wings even wider, opening the floodgates for fiat-on and off-ramps in more countries and launching a debit card. As for the U.S., well, it seems the crypto exodus continues.