Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast that dives deep into the stories, backgrounds and breaking news with the biggest names in crypto.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jack Mallers, the founder and CEO of Strike, a bitcoin-based payments network and financial app that’s trying to expand the reach of cross-border payments and remittance markets.

Last year, Mallers’ company raised $80 million in a Series B round to grow in that space, and today counts major companies like Visa, Clover and Fiserv among its partners.

“I think it’s about meeting consumers where they are and solving a problem for them,” said Mallers.

Mallers is also the CEO of Zap, a bitcoin investment and payments company that transacts on the Lightning Network, a second layer on Bitcoin’s blockchain that enables off-chain transactions between parties.

“We are a company involved in Bitcoin, but we don’t care what the price is,” said Mallers. “We use Bitcoin and the Lightning Network for payments, so basically we use Bitcoin, the instrument, to move value around the world. But our customers spend and receive dollars, or spend and receive euros, or spend and receive stablecoins.”

The service works when Bitcoin is $1 or $1 million, Mallers said. The company does not depend on price, but “uses it as a technological innovation in the world of payments”.

We discussed Mallers’ backstory, how he got into the Bitcoin scene as a young adult, whether the Lightning Network could be better than current payment networks, and how major players can enter the space. This episode focused heavily on Bitcoin, so brace yourself.

We also dove into:

• The global potential of Lightning Network
• El Salvador’s Bitcoin Adoption
• Creating new infrastructure to make Bitcoin more accessible
• The Future of the Strike and Bitcoin Ecosystems

“I really think Lightning will serve as the only value transfer protocol for Earth,” Mallers said. “But, I think, as we evolve in the early innings of this journey, the lowest hanging fruit is how do you get fiscal value on Earth? That is why we start there and focus on that.”

Chain Reaction comes out every second Thursday at 12:00 PM PT, so be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite pod platform to stay up to date with the latest web3 and crypto news.