Announcing the Bitcoin Tab

Yo. Today I am unbelievably excited to announce the Bitcoin Tab and the ability to buy bitcoin on Strike! Starting today, Strike will set out to be the cheapest and easiest place on the planet to acquire bitcoin.

At Strike, our mission is to secure financial freedom for all. We accomplish this by making the Bitcoin network easily accessible and usable, which we believe will ultimately result in the best financial experience in the world. To deliver the world’s best financial experience, we believe it is necessary to ensure Strike is a cheap, reliable, simple, and secure way to acquire bitcoin through purchasing, direct deposit, card rewards, and more.

Today, we take another step forward in becoming the best financial experience on the planet. Today, we begin our march towards becoming the go-to service to acquire bitcoin. Today, we launch the Bitcoin Tab and the ability to buy bitcoin on Strike with no fee outside of the market spread.

The Bitcoin Tab

The Story

For the first decade of Bitcoin’s existence, the undeniable killer app has been buying bitcoin. After all, it is the best money conceived in human history, and acquiring it is a service that has been in high demand ever since the first bitcoin block.

The biggest companies in the cryptocurrency industry, and now some of the biggest companies in the world, have built their businesses around charging retail a hefty fee to acquire bitcoin. Coinbase, one of the most popular destinations to buy bitcoin, posted $1.8B in revenue in Q1 of 2021, $771M of which was profit. Of those revenues, 94% came from its asinine trading fees, often nearing 3%.

When asked about their expensive pricing, Coinbase willingly admits to not competing in the free market:

“We’re not trying to win on fees…We’re not trying to compete on fees. We’re competing on being the most trusted.” — Alesia Haas, Coinbase CFO

Hmm, interesting. Last time I checked, competing to be the most trusted does not compromise your ability to compete on fees, Coinbase.

It’s unclear if Coinbase can attempt to compete on fees, even if they wanted to. With trading fees representing nearly all of their business revenue, they use their expensive pricing to help subsidize the rest of their efforts, such as “Earn Crypto” where they give away shitcoins for free. How can they afford free shitcoin customer acquisition? Well, probably because they overcharge users to acquire bitcoin. Make no mistake, when you buy bitcoin on Coinbase, you are supporting shitcoins.

Bitcoin is open-source money on an open monetary network. So, in theory, costs should get driven down towards zero in an open system and a free market. Right?

Well, kind of. We have seen other services pop up to get a slice of the pie, but their pricing is only slightly better, and still egregious, in my opinion.

CashApp and Venmo are the new kids on the block to compete in the free market. They offer a cheaper service and have been growing in popularity. However, they are only somewhat cheaper when taking a detailed look, slightly under-cutting Coinbase.

On a $100 purchase, this is what you’re left with in BTC after fees:

• Coinbase: $97.01
• Venmo: $97.70
• CashApp: $97.74

We can see Coinbase remains the most expensive, at nearly 3%. Venmo and CashApp are cheaper, but still, often charge retail well over 2% to buy bitcoin.

Source: Amounts shown are based on publicly available fee schedules and/or from trades on CashApp, Coinbase, and Venmo as of June 30, 2021, and are subject to change at any time.

It makes sense, after all. Venmo and CashApp have built their businesses around charging users unusually high fees inside of their respective closed monetary networks. For example, PayPal has recently hiked fees across the board, now charging sellers 3.49% + $0.49 to process transactions and businesses using Venmo 1.9% + $0.10 to process transactions.

At Strike, we believe the Bitcoin (plus Lightning) network is the fastest, cheapest, most inclusive, and first open monetary network in human history. We believe Bitcoin will dematerialize existing monetary networks, and we are in the beginning stages of a grand transition onto the world’s first truly open and global monetary network. As such, gone are the days where closed monetary networks can over-charge on fees. In an open system, the best experience wins. Not who is first.

That’s why today, we have accepted that challenge. Today, Strike users can buy bitcoin on Strike with no added fees, only taking on the market-spread execution cost charged to us by our execution partners. As of typing, our execution costs are below 0.3%, and we expect that to drop below 0.1% over the coming months as our volume grows. The more our volume grows, the less our partners charge. We’re committed to driving the price to buy bitcoin on Strike down to as close to zero as we possibly can.

We don’t need to charge users 2%-3% to buy bitcoin. Our innovation as a company comes in our ability to disrupt payments using the Bitcoin and Lightning network. The cost to acquire open-source money on an open network will inevitably be driven to zero, anyways. Why wait? Did you really expect me to undercut Venmo by a few basis points? Did you think I was going to let Coinbase charge the world 2%+ so they can shove shitcoins down everyone’s throat?

No way. We just ripped the pin out of the grenade and tossed it into the crowd. Buying bitcoin will not cost more than it takes to acquire. Buying bitcoin will not subsidize shitcoin casinos. If you want to compete, I’d suggest getting to know the Lightning Network, Strike, and all we’re doing to empower economic freedom for all. Compete on the experience in a truly free market, the way it should be. You won’t survive over-charging users to buy bitcoin any longer.

Pawn to e4, world. Your move.

The Product And What’s Next

Today, the cost to acquire bitcoin works its way towards zero. Today, Strike begins offering users the ability to buy bitcoin, for no added fees.

Today Strike takes another step forward in becoming the cheapest place to buy bitcoin and the best financial experience in the world.

How does it work? Simply and elegantly, of course. Let’s take a look.

Strike now has a Bitcoin Tab, located in the navigation bar. The Bitcoin Tab houses all things Bitcoin, as one would imagine.

A user simply navigates to the Bitcoin Tab, clicks buy, enters the amount, and confirms the purchase.

No hidden fees, no sifting through shitcoins, no added noise. The way stacking sats should be.

Today, the Bitcoin Tab allows you to buy bitcoin. However, the Bitcoin Tab lays the foundation for much more. We feel that the best financial experience in the world should allow a user to accumulate bitcoin in as many ways as possible for as cheap as we can afford.

Soon users will be able to:

• Buy bitcoin
• Get paid in bitcoin
• Get rewards in bitcoin
• Round-up-savings in bitcoin
• Much more

The Bitcoin TabPay Me In Bitcoin

We’re going to start with a waitlist, as we typically do. You can join the waitlist and get early access to the Bitcoin Tab at bitcoin.strike.me. The more friends you refer, the quicker you get access.

We’ll continually widen access every day until launching publicly, which we expect to be in the coming weeks. At Strike, we hold ourselves to an extremely high standard and always go at our own pace. We want to test, refine, gather feedback, and prepare to service millions.

I have been buying bitcoin on Strike for about a month now. I’ve been a Bitcoiner for close to a decade at this point, and I’m proud of the experience we’ve built. Buying bitcoin for no added fees is how it always should have been.

Now it is.

Thanks

Ok, everyone, that’s all I have for today. You’ll hear more from me soon, we have a lot more to come at Strike:

• Bitcoin Tab public rollout
• Pay me in bitcoin
• Strike EU
• Strike API
• Strike Card
• More Strike rollout in the developing world

This is not a drill. Our mission is to secure financial freedom for all, and we won’t stop until we do so for all 8 billion people on the planet.

To the community, thank you. Your support means the world and allows me to keep going. From the bottom of my heart, I love y’all.

You can contact me @JackMallers on Twitter or jack@strike.me via email. Register for early access to the Bitcoin Tab at bitcoin.strike.me and help us test. Top referrers will get access first. After testing, we’ll release it all publicly in the coming weeks.

As I said above, we’ve got more coming. I’ll talk to you sooner than you think, don’t blink.

Much love. Be easy.

Peace out 👊 🍻