What happened to Jack Mallers and Strike?
Whatever happened to Jack Mallers? Three years ago, he was on top of the Bitcoin world when he took to the stage at Bitcoin 2021 to introduce El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele as the world’s first president to legalize bitcoin as legal tender.
And his star continued to rise. The following year, his keynote speech at the same event attracted a huge audience, and Google searches for his name soared when he boasted about NCR, Blackhawk, and Shopify integrations that would supposedly allow McDonald’s, Walgreens, Starbucks, and Walmart to accept bitcoin payments in-store.
“You’re going to be able to walk into a grocery store, to a Whole Foods, to Chipotle. You want to use a Lightning node over Tor? You do that.” To even more applause, he broadcasted a demo of him buying a soda at a Chicago market with a private bitcoin transaction.
By September 2022, Strike, his marijuana dispensary payment provider-turned CashApp competitor, had raised $80 million with Grant Gilliam’s Ten31, one of the most prestigious Bitcoin investment funds, leading the round.
Inevitably, however, fame fades.
Read more: Bud to Bitcoin: How Strike’s Jack Mallers stumbled from cannabis to crypto
The spotlight swivels away from Jack Mallers
Despite three years as a keynote headliner at Bitcoin’s largest annual event, Mallers was conspicuously absent from Bitcoin 2024.
In fact, his name rarely comes up in mainstream crypto media anymore.
Not only that, Strike hasn’t announced major partnerships this year. Instead, its app added basic limit orders, boasted of a $35,000 pilot program, rolled out support for tax havens, lowered fees, added 2-factor authentication, and increased services for various countries including the UK.
In addition to an underwhelming 2024, Strike failed to live up to Mallers’ commitments from prior years. Despite his 2021 pledge to be bitcoin-only, Strike continues to use tether (USDT) in various African countries and despite a promise he made in 2022, US residents don’t use Strike to pay for groceries or meals at Whole Foods or Chipotle.
By 2023, Mallers seemed to have learned his lesson about grandiose promises, tempering his announcements to a new office opening in El Salvador and improvements to the Strike app. He hasn’t reneged on those unusually conservative promises.
Of course, given Strike’s cash position and ease of fundraising, Mallers’ high net worth, and years of goodwill earned among venture capitalists and Bitcoiners, he could certainly surge back to prominence in future years.
For now though, and for whatever reason, Mallers has taken a step away from his mainstream media tour.
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