In the spring of 2024, Strike quietly flipped the switch on a Bitcoin app for European customers, extending a footprint that already stretched from Chicago to San Salvador [BusinessWire, April 2024]. The company says its payments service now reaches 65 countries [Fortune, May 2023]. The product itself is mundane in the best way: buy bitcoin, send bitcoin, pay a utility bill, settle a contractor in Lagos. The plumbing underneath is anything but.
Strike, founded in 2020 by Jack Mallers, sells a consumer app built on top of the Lightning Network, the layer that turns Bitcoin from a slow settlement chain into something closer to an instant payment rail [Strike.me]. The wedge is price and speed. US customers get tiered fees and no spreads on buys and sells, a pricing change Strike rolled out to replace the hidden margins that most retail crypto apps still bake in [Strike Blog]. Add Bill Pay, which lets a customer route a bitcoin balance, or a cash balance, directly to a US biller [Strike Blog], and Cost Basis tracking for tax reporting [Strike Blog], and the shape of the product becomes clear. Strike is trying to be the checking account for people who keep their savings in bitcoin.
The bet
Mallers' bet is that Bitcoin, specifically Bitcoin on Lightning, becomes the cheapest way to move money across borders, and that a single consumer brand can sit on top of that rail the way Venmo sits on top of ACH. The company has spent the last two years pulling its banking and payments stack in-house. "For the last two years, we've worked to achieve all necessary licensing to serve customers directly," the company wrote when it announced it had migrated onto its own infrastructure [Strike Blog]. That is an expensive, unglamorous decision. It also means Strike no longer rents its core economics from a sponsor bank or a third-party processor, which matters when fee compression is the entire pitch.
The geographic strategy is unusually deliberate for a crypto company. Strike's first international beachhead was El Salvador, where Bitcoin is legal tender and where Mallers has spent significant time on the ground [Strike Blog]. Europe followed in April 2024 [BusinessWire, April 2024]. The 65-country payments footprint reported by Fortune in May 2023 frames the ambition: a single app, one balance, settled across borders on a rail Strike does not have to ask permission to use [Fortune, May 2023].
Why it could be big
The company raised an $80 million Series B in September 2022, led by Ten31, with participation from Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wyoming, Valor Capital Group, and Kube VC [BusinessWire, September 27, 2022][CoinDesk, September 2022][CBInsights]. Ten31 is a Bitcoin-only investment firm, and the syndicate around it skews toward investors with explicit conviction in the asset rather than generalist crossover funds. That alignment cuts two ways. It gives Strike patient capital from backers who will not panic when bitcoin drawdowns compress transaction volume. It also concentrates the cap table inside a single thesis.
Series B funding | 80 | $M
Reported transaction volume | 6000 | $M
Enterprise value (estimated) | 400 | $M
The upside math is straightforward. Strike has reported roughly $6 billion in transaction volume and 600% growth, according to figures captured by Neobanque [Neobanque]. Dealroom estimates enterprise value in a $320 to $480 million range [Dealroom, estimated]. Headcount sits between 51 and 200 [Dealroom]. If even a fraction of global remittance flows, a market measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, migrates onto Lightning rails over the next decade, the company sitting at the consumer front door has a credible path to a much larger valuation than the one implied today.
The team and traction
Mallers is the founder and CEO, and he is one of the more recognizable operators in the Bitcoin developer community, having worked on Lightning tooling well before Strike [Bitstamp Learn Center][BTC Prague][MarketsWiki]. His public profile, frequent conference appearances, an active media presence, and a long association with El Salvador's Bitcoin policy, has been useful both for distribution and for recruiting. The company's 2023 recap framed the team's posture in unusually plain terms: "Being one of the best in the world at Bitcoin necessitates a deep sense of focus and gravity" [Strike Blog].
Product cadence in 2023 and 2024 backs the claim. Bill Pay shipped [Strike Blog]. Cost Basis shipped [Strike Blog]. The European launch shipped [BusinessWire, April 2024]. The fee overhaul shipped [Strike Blog]. The infrastructure migration finished [Strike Blog]. For a company in the 51 to 200 employee band, that is a dense roadmap.
The honest counterfactual
The most credible bear case is named Cash App. Block's consumer app already offers bitcoin buys, holds tens of millions of US users, and competes directly for the same wallet share Strike is chasing [Reddit, competitor list]. Specialized rivals like River, Swan Bitcoin, and OpenNode crowd the Bitcoin-native segment further [Reddit][CBInsights]. Bulls answer that none of those competitors has paired Lightning-native sends, no-spread pricing, and a 65-country payments footprint inside a single consumer product, and that Strike's decision to own its own licensing and infrastructure is precisely the kind of moat that takes years to copy [Strike Blog][Fortune, May 2023]. Whether that differentiation converts into durable user growth against a much larger incumbent is the question the next two years will answer.
What to watch
Three milestones are worth tracking over the next twelve months. First, whether Strike discloses updated transaction volume that confirms the 600% growth figure has held through a full bitcoin cycle [Neobanque]. Second, whether the European rollout extends into a meaningful merchant acquiring story, not just consumer buys [BusinessWire, April 2024]. Third, whether the company raises again. The last priced round closed in September 2022 [BusinessWire, September 27, 2022], and a Series C, particularly one that brings in a non-Bitcoin-only lead, would be the clearest market signal that the thesis is broadening beyond the faithful.
The deeper question for readers: if Lightning settles even one percent of cross-border consumer payments by 2030, who owns the consumer brand on top, and is there a reason it should not be the company that already operates in 65 countries on its own rails?