Strike
Strike is a Bitcoin company in the Stablecoins & Payments category, founded in 2020 by Jack Mallers.
The Idea
A payments app built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. It converts dollars to Bitcoin and back behind the scenes, so users send money instantly and cheaply without ever touching Bitcoin. It grew out of 'Zap,' a Lightning wallet Mallers built himself.
Early Traction
Strike's breakout came in June 2021, when Mallers announced in Miami that El Salvador would adopt Bitcoin as legal tender with Strike as its technology partner. But the product was the real story: its Send Globally remittances let people send dollars from the US that arrive as local currency abroad in seconds.
Peak Stats
In its first public financials, released in April 2025, Strike reported over $6B in 2024 volume, up more than 600% year over year, with 85% gross margins and nothing spent on customer acquisition. It projected eight to nine figures of net profit in 2025 with a team of roughly 75, and holds most of its balance sheet in Bitcoin.
Status Today
Active. Still offers Bitcoin payments, but is now focused mostly on its exchange (buying and selling Bitcoin) and lending.
Why It Matters
Strike showed that Lightning could move real money at scale, from one person's phone to a national economy. By making Bitcoin's payment rails invisible, it let people send money cheaply across borders without ever thinking about Bitcoin, the purest expression of Bitcoin as a payments network. The technology works; the harder problem has been adoption, as consumers and enterprises have been slow to embrace Lightning and Bitcoin payments, and Strike's commercial traction today comes more from buying Bitcoin and lending than from payments.