JACK Mallers is one of the youngest entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency ecosystem after founding Strike – the world’s leading digital wallet built on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.
But what is the story behind Mallers?
Who is Jack Mallers?
Jack Mallers was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 9, 1994.
Mallers’ grandfather was the chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade, while his father was the founder of one of the largest futures brokerages in Chicago.
Mallers’ father introduced him to Bitcoin in 2013 and helped him build his start-up in the initial stages.
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Mallers, at just 26-years-old, founded Zap which first targeted cannabis dispensaries with a payment app.
At first it supported two dispensaries in Colorado in 2018.
Although marijuana has been legalized across vast parts of the US, it’s still illegal for recreational use.
This makes it difficult for dispensaries to access banking services, forcing them to deal mainly in cash and cryptocurrencies.
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In September 2019, Zap launched Olympus, which was eventually rebranded as Strike.
The Strike app allows users to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin with ease as well as send BTC via the Lightning Network.
The Lightning Network is a Bitcoin scaling product that allows merchants to accept payments without having to wait for block confirmations on the Bitcoin chain.
Simply put US dollars (or fiat currencies) turn into Bitcoin and Bitcoin then turns into any fiat currency you want on the other end.
Mallers believes removing the middleman from traditional transactions helps put more money back into peoples hands.
“It’s the only monetary network that works in a third-world country as it does in a city like Chicago or New York,” Mallers said.
Strike tried to become a contractor to El Salvador’s government by helping with the country’s adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender.
El Salvador eventually opted for Chivo, however, Strike is allowed to operate and advertise its services in El Salvador.
After launching Strike in El Salvador in late March 2021, Mallers said they experienced overnight success, going from 10 downloads a day to around 20,000.
After El Salvador announced adopting Bitcoin, Mallers was reduced to tears in a public address.
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He later said: “In my opinion, this is one of the bigger developments in economics and emerging markets in the last 250 years.
“It’s the most important thing I’ve ever been a part of, and likely ever will be.”
El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin hopes to save $400 million in remittance payments for the country.
Remittances make up a huge amount of the GDP for Latin Americans as migrant workers head abroad in pursuit of better opportunities.
“We were actually improving the GDP of the country in real-time. Well over 20% of the country’s GDP is remittance-based,” Mallers said.
Mallers’ has also been linked to the Bitcoin Beach Project – which is creating a sustainable Bitcoin Economic ecosystem on the coast of El Salvador, where the majority of people don’t have access to bank accounts and the local businesses wouldn’t be able to qualify for merchant accounts needed to accept credit cards.
Around 70 per cent of El Salvadoreans currently don’t have a bank account.
Mallers believes that El Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender and Strike’s push to create monetary accessibility will help people start to understand what Bitcoin can do as a network and not just an asset.
Strike and Mallers’ focus then turned to Twitter.
Twitter now uses Strike’s API to allow users to tip with Bitcoin from anywhere in the world with any Bitcoin Lightning wallet.
Twitter Staff Product Manager Esther Crawford said: “We want everyone on Twitter to have access to pathways to get paid.”
What is Jack Mallers’ net worth?
Jack Mallers was an early adopter of Bitcoin and purchased BTC at around $250.
Mallers has raised over $100million in funding for Strike and has an estimated net worth of around $20 million based on his shares in the company.