Wastered

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is once again speaking out about Bitcoin. But the richest man on earth is not yet completely convinced.

As a tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk is actually predestined to become Profit Secret enthusiast. So far, however, the Tesla founder has never clearly stated his stance on cryptocurrencies. But the tone is changing.

In a tweet, Ben Mezrich, author of „Bitcoin Billionaires“, writes, probably in view of the recent price increases, that he will never again refuse to be paid in Bitcoin. A stance Musk agrees with in a comment under Mezrich’s initial post. It gets interesting in the rest of the thread, though. There, Musk posts a comment that at least hints that the billionaire has already taken a deeper look at money in general.

What we call money is just a system that enables the division of labour, what really matters is the production of goods and the provision of services. We should look at currencies from an information-theoretical point of view. Whatever has the least error and the least latency will win.

Musk still undecided
Whether this brings Musk any closer to a bitcoin investment is questionable, however. In earlier interviews, the entrepreneur, who was also involved in the founding of the payment service provider PayPal, had expressed doubts about whether BTC could actually become the currency of the future.

The Bitcoin community has great expectations of Elon Musk. If the richest man on earth were to make a positive statement about Bitcoin, it would be a huge step towards legitimising the cryptocurrency and would probably lead to significant price movements.

Bitcoin banks the world – In July 2020, the start-up Zap had managed to raise 3.5 million dollars, notably from VISA. Already well known for its eponymous wallet on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN), the young company is now announcing the launch of its new universal payment product: Strike Global.

A launch with an international reach

It is via a publication on Medium that Jack Mallers, founder of Zap, has just revealed the launch of Strike Global, the worldwide version of his Strike product, until now only available in the United States.

In order to offer this brand new Bitcoin Supersplit integrated banking service to the entire world, Mallers explains that Zap has entered into a partnership with the Bittrex Global exchange platform.

As a result, from the launch of Strike Global – in addition to the U.S. dollar already supported during the public beta – the euro, British pound and Swiss franc will be available to the first users in the coming weeks. The Australian dollar and the Canadian dollar are expected to follow afterwards.

In addition, 2 stable corners of the US dollar will be available: USDT from Tether, and USDC from Circle and Coinbase.

„Strike is like a neo-bank native to the Bitcoin network. Our goal was to break down the barrier between the international banking system and the decentralized network, so that any current account can communicate directly with a Bitcoin portfolio. From there, the use cases made possible depend only on our imagination. For example, a user can link a bank account to his or her Strike account and directly start spending Bitcoins, whether on chain or on the Lightning Network.“

Namson Lê, UX Designer at Zap

A revolution in banking transactions?

What’s so disruptive about Strike? As its founder says, this new offering allows you to move „any value anywhere in the world without variable cost“ at the lightning speed of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

This is enough to make traditional money transfer systems look like dinosaurs on the verge of extinction :

„We also recently realized that our infrastructure is much more efficient than most other existing technologies for transferring value between two different currencies. Where Western Union or Transfer Wise charge expensive fees and a few floating days to transfer dollars across US borders, Strike does it for free and in seconds. Again, all this is made possible by coupling the rails of traditional finance and Bitcoin, especially LN.“

Namson Lê

The most beautiful? It is that the interactions between Strike and the accounts of traditional banks will be simple and transparent. In fact, Namson Le revealed to Le Journal du Coin that Zap plans to be able to „bank“ Strike users „during the course of the year“.

They will have their own account number and routing number (the US equivalent of our IBANs). They will therefore be able to use their Strike account as their main bank, first in the USA, then in Europe „if all goes well“ as Namson Lê explained.

Bitcoin, its blockchain and Lighning Network are a major step forward in the world of payments and bank transfers. Strike Global could well be a kind of realization of this vision. Get ready! What if the real crypto-revolution has just begun?