Strike Is Bringing Freedom To Retail Merchants #908

In this episode, I break down Jack Mallers & Strike's announcement from the Bitcoin Conference to bring Bitcoin & The Lighting Network to merchants all over the United States and why this news is so important. ======================= Fundrise is the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That’s right, Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use, automated platform. See for yourself how over 190,000 investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to http://Fundrise.com/Pomp today and, for a limited time, get $10 when you place your first investment. That’s Fundrise.com/Pomp ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit http://compassmining.io to start mining bit ======================= This episode is sponsored by my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto, Okcoin. They're the fastest growing US based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever, and they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of. From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning to contributing over $1M for Bitcoin core devs, they're doing incredible work to further the bitcoin ecosystem and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets from gaming to defi. With Okcoin, I feel confident that the future really will be ok. To get started, go to http://okcoin.com/pomp for some free bitcoin when you sign up. =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. This episode is a deep dive into the recent announcement by Jack Mahlers and Strike at the Bitcoin Conference. I go through everything, including how he's bringing freedom to retail merchants. I really enjoyed this episode, and I hope that you enjoy listening to these solo episodes as well. Before we get into it though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry. Fundrise is here to help you do just that. It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  and high net worth individuals. That's right, Fundrise is making high-end, private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use automated platform. Its 1 million users already know that the investment with Fundrise is capable of producing strong appreciation returns and income generation while helping to stabilize a diversified portfolio. That's more important now than ever in our inflationary environment. See for yourself how over 190,000 other investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to fundrise.com/pomp today, and for a limited time, you'll get $10 when you place your first investment. Again, that's fundrise.com/pomp. Go check it out, and when you make your first

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  investment, they'll give you $10 on top of it. Fundrise.com/pomp. Next up is Compass Mining. Compass Mining is the world's largest marketplace for mining hardware and hosting. With Compass, everyone can mine Bitcoin. Their team makes it easy to start mining wherever you want, at home or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world. Through the Compass Marketplace, retail miners can access mining hardware with similar prices and purchase plans as the world's largest mining companies. Compass miners own their machines, they choose whatever mining pool they want, and they mine directly to their own wallets. Miners who don't want to host their machines can order Asics directly to their doorstep. Simple and Low-cost hosting agreements coupled with best-in-class customer service are the reasons

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  why Compass is the simplest and most popular way to mine Bitcoin. Start mining your own Bitcoin today by visiting compassmining.io. Again, compassmining.io. Go check them out and let me know what you think. This episode is brought to you by OKCoin. They are my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto. They're the fastest-growing US-based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally, with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever, and they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of. From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning, to contributing over $1 million for Bitcoin core developers,

• 2:59Anthony Pompliano?

  they're doing incredible work to further the Bitcoin ecosystem, and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets, from gaming to DeFi. With OKCoin, I feel confident that the future really will be OK. To get started, go to okcoin.com/pomp for some free Bitcoin when you sign up. Again, if you want free Bitcoin, go to okcoin.com/pomp today. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Good morning, everyone. Bang, bang. Jack Maulers, the founder and CEO of Strike, gave an inspiring presentation at the Bitcoin Conference yesterday. After walking through the lack of innovation in payment technologies over the last 60 years, he announced that the business has partnered with Shopify, Blackhawk, and NCR to power transactions across the Bitcoin payment rails. There is a lot to unpack here, so I'll do my best to summarize it. First, Strike's technology does not require an individual to have Bitcoin, use Bitcoin, or understand Bitcoin. The application allows any individual or business to send any currency, US dollars, Euro, Bitcoin, or anything else, to anyone in the world, instantaneously and nearly for free. This is accomplished by using the Bitcoin payment rails as the payment network, but regardless of what currency the sender or receiver prefers,

• 4:31Anthony Pompliano?

  it automatically gets turned into Bitcoin to go across Lightning Network. That Bitcoin conversion occurs behind the scenes and is abstracted away from the user or the merchant. When a user leverages Stripe's technology, there are no tax ramifications, no price volatility risk, and no required knowledge of Bitcoin, Lightning, or any other technical features. I can send dollars to someone, Stripe converts it to Bitcoin, sends it across Lightning, and converts it back to Euros and hands it to the recipient. I call it auto-magic because it honestly is magical. This leads us to the announcements yesterday. Shopify was the initial announcement. Any Shopify merchant can now add Stripe's payment integration to their store in a few clicks. This allows the merchant to accept any currency in the world, circumvent the credit card

• 5:14Anthony Pompliano?

  network fees, and ultimately get paid out in their currency of choice. Mallor's demonstrated the purchase flow during his speech at the conference, and it is very slick. Next, partnerships with Blackhawk and NCR were announced. These are two of the largest payment processors in the United States. They service approximately 85% of all retail merchants, which means that in the coming weeks, you will be able to spend US dollars, Euros, Bitcoin, or any other currency at these merchants, and they will not have to pay the credit card fees. Stores include McDonald's, Walmart, and many more. So what exactly does this all mean? Bitcoin is both an asset and a payment network. The financial asset, which is what everyone holds in their digital wallet, gets majority of the mainstream press. There is a price attached to it that goes up and down.

• 5:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Wall Street is obsessed with how they can make or lose money with it. Retail users don't have a great way to use Bitcoin for much more than fulfilling the promise of a currency. Bitcoin the asset is amazing. It isn't the whole story, though. Bitcoin is also a payment network. It allows anyone in the world to send value to anyone else without requiring the participation or approval of a third party. There is no CEO, Board of Directors, or shareholders. Bitcoin, the network, is a decentralized system that is secured by millions of miners and node operators around the world. This decentralization allows for lack of censorship, Caesarship, or variability in the monetary policy. Strike is focused on bringing Bitcoin, the payment network, to merchants around the world. By doing this, they can drop their payment fees to nearly $0, give customers the ultimate choice of which currency to use,

• 6:41Anthony Pompliano?

  and capture the benefits of cash finality without risk of disputes or chargebacks. The legacy payment networks may not have innovated in nearly 60 years, but Strike is bringing disruptive technology to payments in a way that threatens hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap. But here's the interesting thing. I don't think the legacy payment providers are going to get disrupted in the short to medium term. The superiority of the Bitcoin network as a payment solution is too obvious for them to ignore. Given that the system is built with open source software, and anyone can use it, I anticipate that the incumbent payment networks will eventually add support for Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. If they don't, they're screwed. Historically, people have thought innovation would come from startups versus incumbents. Bitcoin, both as an asset and a payment system,

• 7:24Anthony Pompliano?

  are proving that innovation can come from the open source community as well. Strike's technology is cool, but it wouldn't be possible without the Bitcoin developers, miners, node operators, and holders. Quite literally, we are all in this together. I've been an investor in Strike for a long time. Jack Mallers is a special entrepreneur who genuinely cares about solving these problems. He has the unique ability to interface with the Bitcoin community, the mainstream audience, and business executives. There's an incredible amount of work left to do so that every retailer in the world can now use the Lightning Network for payment processing, including the education of the end customer as well. But I wouldn't bet against Bitcoin. I wouldn't bet against Jack Mallers, and I wouldn't bet against Strike. Instant transactions, no fees, cash finality. The future is here.

• 8:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Hope each of you has a great day, and I'll talk to everyone tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.