WBD362 Audio Transcription
El Salvador - The Whole Story with Jack Mallers
Interview date: Friday 18th June
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Jack Mallers. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
In this interview, I talk to Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike. We discuss the story that led to Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, all the credit due to the community, and his mission to secure financial freedom for all.
“From the start, the conversation was about financial inclusion, open systems, open monetary networks, free markets, how the existing financial system is broken, and how in theory, the world is a much more free, economically liberal place if the monetary network is Bitcoin.”
— Jack Mallers
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Jack, what a couple of months it's been this last couple of fucking months, man! How are you, how are you doing?
Jack Mallers: Yo, I'm good man, always good. Happy to be here and let's do this!
Peter McCormack: Right, so I think it was about eight weeks ago I got a call from you. I was thinking, "How am I going to get to Miami; I've got to go somewhere for a couple of weeks beforehand?" I was looking across Central and South America and then you call me up and you're like, "Pete, do you want to come to El Salvador?" So, do you want to give the background?
Jack Mallers: Yeah! So, we had made an announcement called Strike Global. It was this attempt at solving cross-border payments with the Lightning Network, and our initial pilot was to be done in El Salvador. And the reasons are now known; El Salvador operates on the US dollar, over 20% of the country's GDP is in remittance, and fees can be upwards to 50% and it's causing this massive emigration problem. So, it was a perfect place for us to do this case study. And not to mention, there was this project called Bitcoin Beach, which now everyone's familiar with, that has cultivated and started this movement of financial inclusion and getting those relative unbanked onto this open monetary network that is Bitcoin, and there's a growing community of people that really cared.
So, I headed down there in late February, early March initially, and it was just to learn and be a good listener and understand what was happening in Bitcoin Beach and to validate a lot of my assumptions to see if Strike could be helpful, and if we could solve their remittance problem and onboard a relatively unbanked country, a country that is not included in the financial system, a country that is abused by financial intermediaries and financial institutions, and give them access to this open monetary network and a great experience and a new financial experience.
Then, while I was there, we launched and things were going really well and I got contacted on behalf of the President, as everyone knows; I came home for a couple of days and then, I got a call from the President like, "Hey, we're going to do this; let's do this. Can you come back and can we finish this off?" So, there was a lot of interest from reporters to be a part of it and cover it and I didn't want anyone else filming me and reporting on me while I was sleeping.
So, I gave Pete an NDA, which he was like, "An NDA? What, you have a new Lightning secret, you loser?" And I was like, "No, man, I think this one's kind of serious and it's not my NDA, so you should sign it". And I told you what we had to go do, and Pete started to put together a film about it and we went together.
Peter McCormack: The funny thing was, I did an interview with Natalie Brunell. I can't remember what the date was, but it wasn't long before we spoke, and she was asking me about Bitcoin adoption in countries. And I think I listed El Salvador, Paraguay and I can't remember the third one, and when it came out I was like, "Oh, no, Jack's going to think I broke the NDA"! I told you about it, but it was kind of funny.
Okay, let's do the full story. So, tell me about when you got here, what you saw with Bitcoin Beach, what those guys had been doing, what you learnt from them?
Jack Mallers: So, I firstly want to give Bitcoin Beach all the credit. They are the reason I went to El Salvador; they inspired a lot of what I ended up building and what ended up happening, and the role I played was very minor. And, it's a tremendous community, a tremendous amount of individuals and their legacy should be remembered forever.
So, I went down there, I lived in El Zonte for over a month initially, and I met the team, I understood the problem they were trying to solve, the infrastructure they had already; and then, what I felt was missing and how I felt I could hopefully help the entire country. And we also, from the very beginning, viewed El Salvador as a first step. Strike's mission as a company is to improve financial freedom for all in the world and we do that by making the world's first open monetary network easily accessible and usable.
So, it was a great place to start and I lived there. It was awesome. Then, I actually lived in San Salvador, the capital of the country, and I was sitting in a sushi restaurant with my friends that had travelled with me just to be helpful; I don't speak Spanish! So, we're sitting and eating sushi and they were like, "Oh my God, we're all over the news". Every El Salvadoran Facebook group and everything was, "Strike! Remittance is free! Download this app and you don't have to go to Western Union! It improves your life!" and all of these things we're seeing all over the internet and I'm like, "Okay, you've got to ignore it; just keep working".
Then I get a DM on Twitter and it's, "Hi, Jack, this is a message on behalf of President Bukele", and I'm like…
Peter McCormack: Oh, fuck!
Jack Mallers: I initially ignore it and think, like I get weird Twitter DMs all the time, and so I don't take it very seriously. And I read it again and I realise it's from his brother and I lean over to my friend and I show him and we collectively kind of begin to piss our pants! Because, I mean it wasn't clear, like am I in trouble? What's happening? We'd launched this app, which directly threatens the internal banking infrastructure of the country; we're banking the unbanked; we're coming in as Americans and providing this financial infrastructure. I have no idea if they are educated on what's happening, if they understand what our goals were, because we were ultimately just trying to be helpful and trying to push Bitcoin forward and trying to make the world a better place through Bitcoin, the Network, and Bitcoin, the asset. And so, it wasn't clear to me.
So, we calm ourselves down, couldn't eat, we were just freaking out in this sushi restaurant and then we're like, "Okay, let's just push the meeting out". They wanted to meet immediately. I was like, "Let's push the meeting out a week and collect our thoughts". I also didn't pack a suit. I had all my hoodies; I was like, "I don't have anything to wear. I'm going to walk into this President's office with flipflops and a hoodie"! I messaged back and said, "This is fantastic; let's push it a week".
They end up getting into this dialogue that was tremendously fascinating. It was about the lack of financial inclusion in the country and how the majority of the country didn't have a bank account; and if they were going to build a country that they wanted to live in and they wanted their kids to live in, that they had to rebuild their financial infrastructure. And they saw Bitcoin and what Strike was doing as a major factor in what they viewed as the future of the world; and not only in El Salvador, but globally.
They saw the country uniquely positioned to take the first step in where the United States is incapable; where the EU is incapable; and I was blown away. It was never about, "We're going to buy $1 billion worth of Bitcoin and try and make money", it was all about financial inclusion, it was about open networks, it was about free markets from the very beginning. And then, at the end of the message they said, "Oh, by the way, you don't have seven days to meet up; you're going to meet us within the next 24 hours!" That was like, "All right!" So, I called my dad --
Peter McCormack: Woah!
Jack Mallers: Yeah. And obviously, within the message it was, "This is an absolute secret; you can't mention this to anyone". So, I called my dad and was like, "Hey, listen, I've got to go meet the President and I'm scared. I don't know if I'm going to get arrested, if I'm going to be threatened, or if I'm going to be praised and then threatened by the United States. I have no idea what's going on; I'm just a bitcoiner through and through, but I've got to do this. I've got to do this for Bitcoin, I've got to do this for financial inclusion for the people that need this and I'm going to speak my truth and talk about how I view the world". And I went, and my buddy came with me.
There were three of us and the thesis was, one person was going to stay behind in case I never made it out of the meeting and we had a direct line to the US Embassy and other people that we had collected that would be helpful; then my other friend went and he was just like, "Listen, dude, if you're going to go to jail, I'm going to go to jail with you, man. This is a fight for human freedom and this is not the point in which we turn around". So, he came with me to just wait in the lobby and in case I went to jail, I wasn't going to go to jail alone. And we went!
We pulled in. First of all, they gave me latitude and longitude; they didn't give me an address, which was awesome, so I gave my driver latitude and longitude. He was like, "What is this?" and I didn't speak Spanish. I had to explain to him that we had to put in Google coordinates and stuff. And we show up and there's like guys with the rifles everywhere and all the security. And initially, they perk up like, "Who's this American 27-year-old?" and then out comes the President's brother and waves me in. And I'm wearing a hoodie and he's wearing a hoodie and I immediately felt comfortable!
From the start, the conversation was about financial inclusion, open systems, open monetary networks, free markets, how the existing financial system is broken and how, in theory, the world is a much more free, economically liberal place if the monetary network is Bitcoin. And we talked about everything. We talked about art, we talked about artistry, we talked about anime, we talked about our taste in food, and just got to know each other as people and then how Bitcoin could play a role in improving the country and improving the world, both the asset and the network. And that was the beginnings of it.
I went back to my hotel in San Salvador and I began sketching out some ideas and we would meet over and over and over, and I'll stop there. But, that was the first. And obviously, they gave me instruction that this was an absolute secret and we can't let the narrative sneak in to other people's minds and get too many voices included, "We got this, we can do this, we really trust your expertise" and I grew to appreciate their opinions and their viewpoint on the world, and that was the start of the whole thing.
Peter McCormack: Well, there are some stories we can share in terms of going to visit them, because I went as well and I'm not going to lie; it was the most nerve-racking experience of my life. Let me tell you a funny story.
So, I went to the Presidential Palace and I had to wait an hour for the meeting, because his other one overran, and there was this corridor that was lined with traditional soldiers with swords. And as you walked past them, their eyes followed you. I was so nervous, I had to go to the toilet five times before the meeting, so every time I was going down, these eyes were following me! I just thought they must be thinking, "What is this fucking moron doing?"!
Okay, let people know, let's go into a bit more detail on the problem that Strike is solving, the problem with remittance, what's happening, the reality of it; because, what really pisses me off is when you get someone like Peter Schiff, he can hate Bitcoin as a store of value if he wants and blame volatility; he can hate it as a medium of exchange; but when he says, "Bitcoin isn't needed by anyone", the reality, if you can use the Bitcoin Network for remittance and send dollars back and forth, it's an outright lie that Bitcoin isn't needed by anyone. So, talk about the remittance problem and what's being solved.
Jack Mallers: So, one of the insights that has to be conceptually understood is that we at Strike view Bitcoin as the world's best monetary network. In fact, it's the best monetary network conceived in human history. And so, if you look at existing monetary networks, like the Visa Network, or the Square Network, or the PayPal Network, all monetary networks are out to set and achieve virtually the same thing: define identity within the network, like what's the difference between my Visa card and Peter's Visa card; define payment standards, so how to send a payment and how to receive a payment; how finality is achieved; how clearance is achieved; how credit is issued and settled within a network; and, you have hundreds of different monetary networks all over the world and they're private and they're bifurcated. And my Cash App identity doesn't talk to my PayPal identity; they aren't interoperable with each other. They live independently and they compete.
So, the insight that we have at Strike is that Bitcoin is the world's first open monetary network. It's open, it's ultimately inclusive to everyone on the planet. It works in the developing world the same it works in the developed worked. It works in El Zonte the same it works in Chicago. It also can achieve final clearance, cash, finality, all the payment standards and general goals of any monetary network cheaper, faster and better.
So, what we viewed as the first killer app of many is cross-border payments. Cross-border payments traditionally carry anything between three to ten intermediaries to accomplish; they take two to ten days; fees can be upwards of 50%; and we've said all of a sudden, we have this monetary network that can move any amount of fiscal value anywhere in the world 24/7/365 and has the liquidity profile to get in and out of any currency at any time.
Peter McCormack: That "any amount" is really super important though, right?
Jack Mallers: Yeah, exactly. So anyway, the thesis was, if we can use Bitcoin, the rails, the network, and not necessarily make you hold the asset and get a multisig setup; but if I can link my Chase bank account that's interoperable with the Bitcoin Network and Peter's British pound account that's interoperable with the network, in theory I can make a payment to Peter from my US dollars in Chicago to his pounds in Bedford. How that would work is the dollars are debited from my Chase account, transferred to Bitcoin, zipped across the ocean and across the border over the Lightning Network where it lands there in a second and at no cost and then transferred right back into pounds.
So in theory, it should dematerialise the entire cross-border payment and remittance space and begin a new epoch in how we think about financial connectivity and inclusivity on the planet. And to your point, Peter, it's really, really important to identify "any amount". I want to draw this akin to Robinhood.
So initially, when Robinhood was starting their pitch to investors, I've actually spoken to the Robinhood founders as of recent, and their pitch to investors recently, investors didn't get it. They were like, "Listen, I trade $500,000 lots; I trade $1 million at a time. I don't understand commission-free trading. I don't care to pay 1%. What's 1% of $1 million?" And what they didn't understand is that there's fixed costs associated to trading and to prime brokerage and that sure, it's 1% if you're trading $1 million, but it could be 50% if you're trading $50, because there's a base minimum fee that is associated to brokerage.
So, not only did Robinhood make commission-free trading, but they enabled an entire new market of traders. You couldn't trade with $5 in your pocket before, because the fixed costs associated priced you out. It was a minimum fee of like $50 to make a trade, so it was only economically responsible to trade lots in the thousands of dollars. So, not only did Robinhood make trading cheaper, but they unlocked trading for an economic class that was previously uninvited and not included in the opportunity of buying stocks and participating in the equity market.
So, I say all this to say, what we're doing is the exact same, is that yes, if you want to send $5,000 to Europe, using Strike will be way cheaper, way faster, way better and TransferWise and Western Union, none of these services make sense anymore. However, what's important in reference to El Salvador is, these people are operating within a remittance market where $50 is what they're sending home every week. In El Zonte, $300 a month is the average income. So, the fixed costs associated with cross-border payments in the traditional financial system, that's where the 50% fees come in. US citizens are sending $10,000 to Europe and saying, "I'm not getting charged 50%; TransferWise isn't taking $5,000" but yet, if you try and send $50 to El Salvador, it will cost you $25.
Lightning solves that; there are no intermediaries. This is a peer-to-peer network, it's open, it's permissionless and it costs nothing to send $1 or $1,000 or $100,000 or $100 million. The fees are tremendously small and sometimes zero. And so, it enables a new market of cross-border payments where, if you've emigrated away from your family, away from your home town because of the lack of financial opportunity, the lack of financial inclusion, because that's caused gang violence and threatened the security of your country, and you left and you now live in South Florida and you're now working hard hours and wage to send money home and you're sending $50 to $100 home every single month, your family's going to get all $50 to $100.
Your family's not going to have to risk their health to go to Western Union to pick it up, despite gangs bullying them outside. There are no financial intermediaries founded in the United States that cooperate with Washington DC to take any cut of that and to upwards charge you and abuse you. And you can have financial inclusion and financial access and a quality of life and basic human freedoms, which I believe is access to sound money, from your phone. And it's really tremendous and I'm very proud of it obviously.
Peter McCormack: Okay, we'll talk about the Lightning side of it in a minute. Let's talk about the Tether solution that you've put in place temporarily for El Salvador, why that is, because I think people don't really understand what's going on with this.
Jack Mallers: Yeah, well we can finish the rest of the story, but I hope people understand that when I went to El Salvador, I just had a semi-Twitter relationship with Mike, Head of Bitcoin Beach. I didn't know any president, I didn't talk to any financial institutions, and I was actually able to get connected with some of the financial institutions in El Salvador before I went, just by ways of one of our investors. And I asked them the situation and they said it's actually illegal for a financial service to custody dollars and represent dollars on behalf of a user. No one understands how Bitcoin is treated legally; no one understands how it's taxed; and it's generally kind of outlawed and the government has not given any clarity.
So, I was like, "Well, fuck, I don't know then how I'm going to pull this off!" So, what I did is, we built Tether into Strike, which was the equivalent of the Chase bank account in America, and it at least gave us some MBP basic functionality, where I can go and just observe and listen and see how people used it and see if it was helpful. But now, we're already integrating with the top five banks in the country.
So, there are two things: there are the banks in the country, which are all going to be interoperable on Lightning and replace what is the equivalent of ACH in America to the Lightning Network. It's actually really funny. I went and talked to one of the banks and set up an account and, "Okay, how do I move money from this bank to this bank?" and they're like, "Are you kidding? That's not possible". I was like, "Okay, this is a pretty broken system".
But, remind you that 70% of the country doesn't have a bank account and isn't in that system in the first place, and so we're integrating with the two top, they call them cashpoints, cash point distributers, where you can walk into a fiscal location with dollars, or you can come with an app balance and walk out with fiscal dollars. It's a way to cash in and cash out with fiscal cash for those that are unbanked. And so, with those two integrations, we'll have close to 1,000 cashpoints that are not only spread through El Salvador, but through the majority of Central America; and it allows all of the unbanked to walk in with $100 worth of cash and get that balance onto Strike; and it allows $100 of Strike balance to be exported and cashed out into fiscal cash.
So, we're doing all of that and all of that to say that Tether's no longer a part of anything. To give everyone context, I went to El Salvador 90 days ago and this has all been a thrill and very fast, but Tether was part of the plan originally because it had to be, I didn't have a choice; and then, you launch with Tether, you growth hack, you learn and be a good listener and be a good observer. You end up meeting with the President and helping define regulatory clarity in the country and then you roll Tether out, get it the fuck out here and you help the country build the most financially inclusive and resilient and reliable financial infrastructure any country's ever seen in human history.
Peter McCormack: Nice. Well listen, thanks for clearing that one up. Okay, so let's go back to the story. So, you've met with the President; what's next?
Jack Mallers: So, I initially meet with them and my advice from day one was obviously, you know me, but it was Bitcoin only, in that Bitcoin can solve, in my opinion from a high level, two fundamental things that embody basic human freedom and financial inclusion for a country that, in my opinion, has been relatively abused by the system. And, one is addressing the unintended spill-over that the Federal Reserve causes by inflation; and the other is a monetary network that is not only inclusive and open, but is tremendously efficient.
The general concept was taking a country who may be 250 years behind and putting them 250 years ahead. So, we have these conversations and they're taking me around the capital, San Salvador; we're walking through the parks, we're meeting the people. It's tremendously fascinating and interesting. And then, I go home, and I was home for, I don't know, a day or two and then they call and say, "Hey, listen, we've decided this has always been part of our plan, but after talking with you and getting to know the space a little bit more and hearing your ideas, we need to make Bitcoin legal tender and we need to rebuild the country's financial infrastructure, and be a representation for the entire world".
It was like this mic-drop type of phone call. So, I called the leadership of Strike and say, "Hey, I've to go back" and we planned the trip and I went back and I talked with them pretty much every single day. And, we discussed this whole free market, crypto economy thing, all the way down to, "No, it's about Bitcoin" and, we'll talk about shitcoiners and why that doesn't make sense later, but that was pretty much it. And then, it was all about execution; so, began just advising on the bill and what it should look like and they would ask me questions on my opinions and stuff, and it was just collaboration.
Again, I want to give credit: I would phone up a lot of bitcoiners in the space and ask opinions and give thoughts and I don't want to reference them, because I don't know if they're okay with their acknowledgement in this, but we collaborated. And then it was about how to actually pull it off. Yeah, in the midst of this -- sorry, I feel like I'm ranting, it's just a long story.
Peter McCormack: No, carry on. Look, I was there. I don't think people can really comprehend what those -- I mean especially, there was about a five-week period where it was as intense as fuck. It was really difficult, because I had people asking and talking and I was like, "I can't talk about it", etc. But it wasn't just that the country had turned round to you and the President and his brothers had turned round and said, "Yeah, we want to do this, we want to make Bitcoin legal tender", you were running a business; I know you're going to talk about the Indy 500; you had Miami to prepare for; you had life to live; you had to keep fit; you had to eat. So, I don't think people really understand. I mean, what was the pressure like?
Jack Mallers: It was overwhelming and it was a little disorienting. But, listen, people have been concerned about me saying I'm not being public and stuff. I'm the toughest motherfucker anyone's ever met. I'm a soldier and I will die on this hill; that's not a meme. And, I fight for what's right. I'm the most resilient, ambitious, loyal guy; those are qualities I pride myself on. So, it was part of the job, man, and it was a job that I subscribed myself to and that I would take any day of the week; I'd do it all over again.
But no, I mean I went from meeting with the government in a top-secret sense; it was like, "Don't you dare mention this to anybody". Then I would come back and have a call with the Indy Car team; and then I would open my sketchbook and start drawing visions of what a car would look like; and then I would start writing edits to the bill and like, "Would this look good; I'm not sure?"; and then we're onboarding 20,000 Salvadorans a day and we're hiring like crazy in our business and the US is exploding; and I'm hiring new leadership and moving our work structure around; and I'm living out of this villa on the coast of El Salvador.
It was intense and I would talk with other folks and I wasn't allowed to say anything I'm working on; and people are wiring me millions of dollars for the Indy Car; and it was coordinating with open-source teams on where the money's going; but it was, I don't know, man, I mean I love it, I live for it. I optimise my life around doing what's best for Bitcoin, because I think Bitcoin is the best tool humanity's ever created to make the most outsized impact on humanity and society and human behaviour. So, if I can do best by Bitcoin, I feel like it's the best way I can impact the world and those around me.
Peter McCormack: Well, that optimisation's true, because me and Dylan would stay up late drinking a bottle of wine, talking about Bitcoin, getting to know each other, talking about the film. You'd go off, go to bed; we'd get up holding our heads, you'd be down the gym working out, sweating it out. I saw it all and that's one of the things; I don't think people can really understand, or they can't see behind the curtain. Look, we've got it all on film, which is great, but I don't think people can see behind the curtain of what was happening and how you were preparing yourself. So, we'll show that in a film some time.
Okay, let's talk about the bill; the reality of what happened there.
Jack Mallers: Yeah, well I want to make a few things clear. There's no commercial agreement between Strike and the government. The government is not paying Strike or me anything; there's no contract we signed where we have to be the infrastructure. In fact, I advised and I gave my opinion of the opposite in that, open networks have a tremendous amount -- the economies of scale and network effects associated with them are so powerful and just by plugging into them, you're going to get the free market competition that every country would die for, for every business.
I mean, it is unbelievable that all of these services are going to be natively interoperable. And so, in fact, even if they wanted to have a commercial agreement with Strike, I would never do it. And so, the cooperation on the bill was just, listen, I'm a bitcoiner and they trust my expertise and I was just giving advice.
So, yeah, we would go back and forth on a lot of things and ultimately, it's the President's signature and the President's decision on what's included, and there are a lot of things that I advised against that they ended up going with, like the timeline proposed; but generally speaking, it was a great experience and again, it was really optimised around financial inclusion and rebuilding financial infrastructure on an open monetary network, not only because it's cheaper, faster, more efficient and more inclusive; not only because it doesn't have any intermediaries or it operates on open-source money, and so it's a race to the bottom, and there is never going to be an environment where a single entity can be protective over high fee structures; but also because of the network effects, because of the free market environment.
Then, I advised against, you know, it should be the Bitcoin standard; that's what makes the most sense. If we're optimising to solve against the inflation spill-over of the Federal Reserve that leads to the rising rates that leads to crushing markets like El Salvador; if we're looking to solve for financial inclusion, then nothing else makes any sense. If all of a sudden, there's a crypto asset that's optimised for people that are ambidextrous and now the country needs to update and adopt ambidextrouscoin, well that implies inflation to the asset class and inflation to Bitcoin. So, you have unintended spill-over of inflation by people just creating crypto coins that actually do nothing and it doesn't solve your inflation problem one bit.
You want to subscribe to a hard money, monetary policy that's defended by a distributed network and not exposed to any central point of failure, and that's Bitcoin; and entertaining other coins implies inflation that's outside of your control, and that doesn’t logically make any sense. And then the other is financial inclusion, in that if you were to operate on hundreds of different crypto monetary networks that aren't interoperable with each other, it's the equivalent of what we have today, of bifurcated, independent monetary networks.
Bitcoin, and its developers, it's designed for it to be robust; it's designed to scale in layers; and it's the only cryptocurrency that's been proven to actually achieve that; and that the Lightning Network actually works and it works at scale, and I would do demos where I'm swinging around tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Lightning Network with them. So, that was some of the advice I was giving, in that this is not about enabling Binance, but as a country; this is about the Bitcoin standard and empowering the world through building a model country and a model civilisation. And we talked about a lot of things.
If you think about walking into -- I used to famously give this example where, if I walk into a Starbucks and they're interoperable with the Lightning Network and there's a Lightning QR code there, the power and the freedom is now in the consumer. I could use Cash App, I could use Coinbase, I could use Strike, I could use Wallet of Satoshi, I could use the Bitcoin Beach Wallet; I could build my own wallet and be interoperable with it myself, and that's a beautiful society and a beautiful world, where it's up to the consumer to toggle their trade-offs of privacy, of fees, of colour of the application, of how much KYC they want to provide. It's the ultimate free market environment and it allows the consumer to live the life they want.
The government, one of the lines that they always, always say is, to them, this is way bigger than Bitcoin too; they want to enable a society where people can be themselves and people can be what they want, and they don't subscribe to college debt in six figures and then have to optimise their life around paying it back. So, it's a society and a world where the money makes sense; where economic opportunity is reliable and resilient; and the monetary network is inclusive; and the monetary policy is distributed in a network of peers; and that people can be themselves and pursue their true passions; and it's a free market environment in a liberated world; and they wanted it to be a model for the rest of the planet.
Anyway, those were some of the high-level conversations we're having and we're going back and forth. Then, there was this point where they were like, "Okay, we need to build all of this infrastructure. Let's get all of the banks onto using the Strike API and get them interoperable and we're going to do this and we're going to mine out of volcanoes…" and all these things. And my advice was, "You have to just plug into the open network. If you plug into it, then the research that MIT professors are doing about cryptography benefits you. What Jack Dorsey's doing at Cash App with Bitcoin benefits you. What Michael Saylor's doing in issuing these notes on behalf of MicroStrategy to acquire more Bitcoin benefits you.
"We don't need to go out and achieve a five-year roadmap of all of these things. The best way is to plug into the open monetary network, achieve the network benefits, achieve the financial inclusion. People are going to come and rally behind something that stands for human freedom, and you just iterate your way through and let the open, free market and open monetary network build on itself; and it is actually against everything we're trying to achieve together in an open free world if we're going to build everything from scratch in a closed manner".
So, my advice was, "Try and come up with some way to make Bitcoin legal tender, some general plans and infrastructure. We'll talk to some of the banks and have a solid footing of the road map, and then just do it". So, that was the advice and then I had to take off to Indianapolis. So, we go to Indianapolis and the Bitcoin car races; we raise a ton of money.
Shout out my friend, Saquon Barkley; he jetted in to stand next to me and the PNC Bank car during the national anthem and then jetted back to New York to make practice for the Giants. So, that is a bitcoiner if I've ever seen one. Matt Odell, Peter, Russ Okung, everyone showed up; it was a great event. I shifted gears and I went into Bitcoin Car mode.
Then from Indy, we went to Miami and through all of this, we're messaging and drafts of the bills are getting passed around. We're like, "Okay, this is interesting". They're asking my opinion on things. And then, this idea was flirted with, "Hey, what if the announcement was made at the Bitcoin Conference?" and a lot of it had to do with, you know, these guys are bitcoiners, if you can't tell.
Peter McCormack: They are.
Jack Mallers: They've been on Bitcoin Twitter for some time. And so, they're looking at what Elon Musk is spouting and they're like, "This doesn't make any sense, because with our volcano mining operation, we kill all of this FUD; this FUD here, this FUD here". And they're like, "This is ridiculous, we should just plug into this open system. This makes all the sense in the world. And so, maybe it makes sense to make an announcement at the Bitcoin Conference".
So, I'm sitting here, also Strike, we're hiring like crazy, we're growing like crazy; we actually have, I'll be announcing next week, a huge feature: we're launching in Europe, trust me, very soon; and so, I'm trying to manage all this stuff and all of a sudden like, "Oh, gosh, am I going to do this at the Bitcoin Conference? I have no idea". And, as we approached the Conference, we're having this dialogue and they're like, "You know, I think we should go for it". And so, I call the Conference, send them the NDA and say, "Hey, guys, I think I need a speaking slot. Here's what it's about, it's tremendously sensitive, it's tremendously serious; this is not a drill".
Then, the government was interested in letting a few companies know early to ensure that there was sufficient support. And so, a month or so prior, I'd started consulting with the geopolitical press firm, because someone within my company was like, "Hey, this might be one of the biggest geopolitical announcements in the last 250 years and it isn't clear how it's going to be received. We know bitcoiners are going to be happy, but we're kind of unclear about your safety, about how people are going to address you and all of these things", so I'm consulting with them.
I reach out to some of these companies that, again, I'm not going to go into names; and we're talking with the government; and then, I get this speaker slot and the President is like, "Okay, so I'm going to do a video for you for my announcement and you should tell your story and everything and why this is good for the world. And we'll plug into this open system and plug into this resilient community of cyber hornets and let's do it".
So, my Conference schedule was crazy. I had a panel on Lightning for businesses and what Lightning means to the world; and I'm going to dinners and there are investors interested; and Strike's growth is just crazy and opening all these new business lines; and I'm talking to the NFL, I'm talking to NASCAR; I'm talking to all of these amazing Premier League teams and all these opportunities. And then I get a message, this is the day before the announcement, I get a message that the final video is coming and that I need to start my speech.
So, it's 9.00pm and I'm at dinner and I'm with my team and I'm like, "Guys, I have to go to the hotel immediately. This is definitely going to happen tomorrow". So, I texted the Conference and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to be speaking; give me the speaking slot", and I started the presentation at maybe 10.30pm Miami time, with the announcement set to be 4.00pm the next day; and it was just an all-out hackathon.
My team were helping me, we were scraping together ideas, on calls non-stop. And my best friend in the world, who's also the CSO of Strike is sitting right next to me in my hotel room.
Peter McCormack: Shout out to Dylan!
Jack Mallers: Shout out to Dylan! And we're like, "All right, this is it, man. We're going to change the world. It's kind of unclear how safe this is and what's going on, but we've got this and this is what's best for humanity, this is what's best for the world, for society, for all of those out there that need help", and I was more than like, "Let's go!" And I was fired up and I got the final version of the video at 4.00am Miami time, and my presentation was 4.00pm.
So, I didn't sleep; Dylan went to bed. Actually, I will never forget the timestamps of this day, for obvious reasons, but I didn't sleep. I had to do the slides. I was pulling together a bunch of data that I obviously knew, inflation and the Illinois housing hike and stuff, but I was pulling together this data, crafting the talk, and Dylan was set. I was set to wake him up at 8.00am. So, I get the video at 4.00am and I watch it and I cry.
I remember, I was walking out of my hotel and walking along the beach, and there are people walking past me that were just drunk from the night before, and they're spilling over themselves on the beach; and I'm walking with my headphones in with tears in my eyes and they're kind of making fun of me, whatever; throw the beer can at them. They're just drunk and having fun and stuff. And I'm just thinking in my head, little do they know, I'm about to make the biggest geopolitical announcement in 250 years and put the flag in the ground that human freedom instillment and financial inclusion starts now. I'm walking past these people and they have no idea, right.
I've got my headphones in, so I walk back in; I work on the presentation; I wake Dylan up at 8.00am. Then we had an emergency meeting with the geopolitical press firm that's doing the press release and managing what reporters can say what, because I don't know how to make a geopolitical announcement. I mean, I'm 27, man! It wasn't too long ago, I was eating Flamin Hot Cheetos and playing beer pong.
So, I'm like, "Okay, emergency meeting at 10.30am and it's about here's the questions you don't answer. People are going to try and phish you, people are going to try and do this, all this crazy shit. This is very serious. Here's the protocol on how we handle this, Jack. Lock in". I haven't slept. I'm fucked up out here. Then, that meeting ends and it's a strict Uber to the Conference at 11.30am, because my first panel starts, which is Pay Me In Bitcoin, which is all the athletes and celebrities that are working with us on the Pay Me In Bitcoin stuff.
So, meeting ends at 11.00am. From 11.00am to 11.30am, I shower, I get ready. I get to the Conference, I do the first panel, Pay Me In Bitcoin, with Russ and Sean Culkin and all these guys. Immediately after was the panel on the Indy Car. We announced how much we raised; these guys are absolute heroes and everything. And then, after that, my team is like, "Yo, you haven't eaten or slept. So, we need to go and get you something to eat". They walked me to these food trucks. There's like Jamaican cuisines. I'm like, "Guys, I can't be shitting my pants giving this announcement". So, I eat a plain hot dog with no bun, no condiments, just wolf this hot dog down. I'll never forget all of these details.
We go back and the presentation's still not done. I've barely gotten time to work on it. So, I'm sitting in the corner doing the presentation and I rally the whole Strike team that's there. I give this talk to them and I say, "Hey, guys, here's the deal. I wasn't allowed to talk about this until now, but I'm going to make an announcement and I don't know how safe this is going to be for you as employees and people are going to come after you, people are going to try and degrade you, people are going to try and ask you hard questions. Here's the protocol we're going to follow. Strike is family. People are here not because they like writing software; people are here because they care about the future of the world, they care about human freedom". These are very passionate bitcoiners that work at Strike.
I showed them the video of the President, I gave them all a hug, we all had a moment and, you know, I ensured that they were safe and that they were taken care of and that they understood the gravity of the moment and what to do in case of emergency and all of those things. Then, I sat down; I had about an hour and a half left until I went on stage and I set out to finish the presentation.
I had Pomp to my left. We're sitting on this couch in the very back, behind the stage. And mind you, after me was Tim Dillon and Jake Paul and Winklevoss. And so, TikTokers are coming by, asking me where the bathroom is. And I'm like, in my head, "Listen, I don't give a fuck that millions of people like watching you dance at 15 seconds at a time". I'm like, "I'm trying to solve systemic human freedom problems right now. Stop bothering me".
Then there's people whisking Jake Paul away and telling him to go take a piss elsewhere, and I had Pomp to my left, I had my best friend to my right and I had my COO in my ears, who's in San Francisco, and we're walking through the slides and everything. We're like, "Okay, we think we've got this", and we had put a bunch of notes on my slides to just give me reference on what to say and points to remember and stuff. And, it was a conscious decision, I asked Pomp, I was like, "Should I go up there and give you a bunch of credit? Should I credit everyone?" He's like, "No, no one knows if this is going to endanger people, how this is going to go. You've got to just get up there and do your thing".
So, I walked on stage and you can rewatch the video if you like. So, I get on stage and I look down and my notes are gone. The screen that displays the notes, someone had kicked the plug.
Peter McCormack: You never told me that.
Jack Mallers: Yeah, it was flickering. So, I get on stage, I haven't slept, but at the same time, pure adrenalin. I live for this; I will die on this hill, that's not a joke; this is the moment that I have prepared for. I'm going to do this on behalf of all the bitcoiners, on behalf of Bitcoin Beach, all the heroes in that community that did this when no one was watching and continued to do it while everyone's watching. I love them, I appreciate them and in no way was I ever trying to get more credit or do everything; they are the true heroes.
I was doing this for them, I was doing this for humanity, I was doing this for the billions that are unbanked, the billions that are excluded and abused by the financial system, the billions of people, actually 8 billion people that are affected by the unintended spill-over of the Federal Reserve's inflation and I was fired up and ready to go; and I get on stage and my notes aren't there.
So, I immediately remember thinking in my head, "I'm going to ask the crowd if they're ready for this and then I'm going to say, 'There's no fucking way' instead of 'There's no way'. I'm going to say 'Fuck', because I need to calm myself down". I've got no notes, I haven't slept, I've taken a million Espresso shots and I just need to clam down. And so, I found where my dad was in the crowd. If you rewatch the video, I locked in with my dad and I just started cursing, because it was all about being myself and embracing the moment and being authentic and fighting for humanity. And then, that's what happened.
Peter McCormack: Well listen, brother, firstly thank you for making me part of this. This last six weeks, eight weeks have been incredible for me as well, so thank you, because I got to live through all of it with you. I got to live through what was happening here in El Salvador; I got to live through Chicago with you; I got to live through the Indy with you; not so much of Miami, because you were busy, I couldn't find you, but I got to watch it and I got to come back and experience it all. So just firstly, on a very personal note, thank you. I don't think people know.
The problem we have is we're in this Twitter world, right, where people just want to spout shit and shout things and get angry and for whatever reason, whatever shit's going on in their life, they just want to be angry at people. But they don't ever know the full details of everything that goes on in the background. And, I mean I don't know about you; in some ways, I've come to accept it that people never will, so you just accept people talk shit.
But I'm glad we're getting this out there, because I want people to know what happened, because this was an intense six weeks. A lot of shit happened; there's a lot of decisions that have to be made which, on the face of it to other people, might seem wrong, but they don't understand what's going on. So, thank you for allowing me to be part of this and doing it now and telling the story.
I do have a question thought with regards to the bill, because the thing that stood out to me on the bill, and I don't want to go through the details of it now, but I thought the bravest thing they did, and I think is going to turn out to be one of the smartest things, is this part of the bill that says, "Every economic agent must accept Bitcoin", but they will transfer it into dollars instantly if they need it.
Now, there's been a lot of questions about that part of the bill, "Are we ready? Can it happen in time?" etc, and the details have got to come, but I feel like that's so important for driving Bitcoin into the country, raising the net wealth of the country, increasing prosperity for people. Also, I met with one guy and he said to me, "Listen, we can do this slowly, or we can just put it on the people and people will learn. If they're forced to do it, they'll learn and they'll learn quickly". How involved were you in that part of the bill specifically?
Jack Mallers: I mean, I actually wasn't aware of that part until right before, but no, I mean it's not about who wrote what part and stuff; it's about first of all, of course, it was an honour to have you come capture this. I'm really excited for people to watch the film of my life and it's a very fascinating story. And for the people that think I was fake crying and stuff, I was clipped-up audio and I was crying my eyes out, like a fifth-grader who lost his Yu-Gi-Oh card, to my dad after I got off stage.
Peter McCormack: We had a big hug, man.
Jack Mallers: So, people will see everything. But anyway, this is way bigger than me, by the way. Again, I'm not in this for any fame. This is about Bitcoin Beach, this is about Bitcoin Core. Think about all of the developers that worked for a decade to enable a moment like this for humanity. I mean, this is not about me. I played the small role that I played and I told my company too by the way that this is not an accident.
I showed them the very first slide in my Strike pitch deck to investors a long time ago and it says, I have it right here, I'll read it, "Mission: our mission is to secure financial freedom for all. We accomplish this by making the Bitcoin Network easily accessible and usable. We choose the Bitcoin Network, because it is uncensorable, unfreezable, permissionless, borderless and offers cash finality. We believe with Bitcoin as the monetary network of the planet, the financial system will be cheaper, faster, more innovative and more inclusive".
So, I told my team, this isn't about us, but this is along our mission, if you look what we did with Russell; if you look what we did with consumers; if you look what we did with El Salvador; it is along the mission and thesis of the company and this is going to happen again, and we just have to continue to fight for our mission and fight for what we subscribe for and fight for how we think the world should be, through our company and through the software we write.
So, this is way bigger than me and I'm not in this for me, and I just want to make that very clear; that this is about this community, this is about everyone on Twitter that's constantly battled FUD; this is about people that stack sats every single day and don't have to brag about it, don't have to be known about it; this is about Bitcoin Beach; this is about you, Peter, who tirelessly travels around the world and covers stories and takes a lot of hate from a lot of people; this is about all of us embracing this moment and hopefully realising that we're pushing the world in what we hope is the right direction; and it's a tremendous thing to be tremendously proud of. So, I want to say that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Jack Mallers: On to the bill. So, from the discussions, again I'm just advising them, and the relationship I have with the government; I'm not a politician. We've never talked about any other political decisions. I'm a bitcoiner, a die-hard bitcoiner. I've spent my whole life on this asset and on this network and I plan to spend the rest of my life being a die-hard bitcoiner.
So, our conversations are about anime and art and food, and they taught me how to put Wasabi on my sushi and how to use chopsticks and stuff. I don't know, I've just used my hands and a fork all my life! And then, Bitcoin. And so, the conversation was about this open network and my impression, from the conversation I had with them, is that they want people to use this open monetary network and not to discriminate away from Bitcoin.
Another part of the bill that's really important that you should check out is that, when things are priced, you're not allowed to misprice things in Bitcoin. So, a pupusa can't cost $1 if you pay in dollars, but $10 if you pay in Bitcoin. So, Bitcoin is to be treated not only equal in the sense of a money, but also equal in the sense of a network. And the thesis that they held is an open monetary network and the network effects and economies of scale that come associated with it, it will become the most innovative and dominant and impressive monetary network in the country and that people should be influenced to go use it. If you have the technical capability to subscribe and plug into the network and be interoperable to it, you should.
To be clear, it is not a mandate to touch Bitcoin, the asset; to hold Bitcoin, the asset. They became very familiar with Strike's infrastructure and understood that you can be interoperable with this open monetary network that gives all these efficiencies while just touching dollars. And, it wasn't subscribing people to volatility concerns or anything like that; it was, everyone should be interoperable with this network. You can use the Bitcoin Beach wallet, you can use BlueWallet, you can use Strike's infrastructure, you can do whatever you want; in fact, someone was like, "You have a commercial relationship with the government; that's why the banks are talking to you". I don't have anything. In fact, that goes against everything that the country stands for and what we're trying to accomplish together.
I told the bank, if you want, you can go download LND from GitHub and you can run your own Lightning node. They prefer working with us. But anyway, it was an effort to get people onto this open monetary network enhanced from the network effects, enhanced from the economies of scale. And it's not like if some pupusa lady is not accepting Bitcoin, she's going to jail; it was that the Bitcoin monetary network carries the properties and the network effects and the free market characteristics that we embody as a country, and it should be treated as equal to the dollar network and holding cash, and that was the intention.
But I think there's a lot of confusion that people are like, "Salvadorans are being mandated to hold Bitcoin", which is not true. A pupusa lady can show an interoperable Lightning Network QR code that can be scanned by any other interoperable wallet, Wallet of Satoshi, BlueWallet, Bitcoin Beach, a compiled LND that's living in someone's basement over Tor and scan it and the pupusa lady's just going to get dollars and never touch Bitcoin, but remain interoperable with the network.
So, from my conversation with the government and hearing about their plans, that's how I'm perceiving it and that part of the bill, to my understanding, is trying to expedite interoperability with what they believe to be the most powerful and inclusive monetary network, which reinstils basic human freedom. And that is my opinion, but I'm not the President.
Peter McCormack: All right, so a couple of other things I want to touch on. So, a lot of people have been coming down to El Salvador for the last few years, seeing Bitcoin Beach, offering their help, getting to know the people, spending time in El Zonte; and since the announcement, we have seen a bunch of people suddenly wanting to come here, shitcoiners, opportunists, etc. I met with the official Bitcoin delegation last night, who came and had dinner, and left, didn't spend any time with the community. I know you talked to them.
When I spoke with the President, I was very, very direct in that there are going to be people who are going to come and say they're bitcoiners, act like bitcoiners, and try and slip under the rug shitcoins and things. He was quite straight with me; he said, "Listen, it's very difficult for us to stop people buying other currencies, but it's only Bitcoin that's legal tender". I know you've got thoughts on this; my view is it's hard enough to get everyone to learn about Bitcoin, we don't need 1,000 shitcoins here.
Jack Mallers: Yeah. Well, if you're referring to the Brock Pierce event that just happened, the government actually just gave me a call --
Peter McCormack: Not just that though, Jack. I mean, I am, but also I think that's a wider issue where there will be others, not just Brock; there will be others.
Jack Mallers: Yeah. So anyway, yeah, I talked to the government a long time ago, months ago, about this, about an appetite for scamming and somehow, inviting people to participate in a free market, participate in an open network, and build on top of what they believe to be the most resilient, impressive and inclusive financial monetary network ever, whilst also ensuring that it's Bitcoin only and it's an ultimate attempt at the Bitcoin standard.
From my conversations with them, that's always been the goal and we've migrated and ended up at that destination. And yeah, actually, they phoned me up yesterday during the day and I talked with them about a lot of things and one of them was Brock Pierce, and they actually declined Brock's invitation to what they invited him to. They didn't have any participation in him coming and stuff, and they understand what's going on.
Ultimately, they don't, in my opinion, my humble opinion, shouldn't gatekeep who comes in and out of the country. Again, that's against what this is all about, but it is a Bitcoin-only project. And I can give my opinion and my thoughts ultimately, like they're going to do as they please. But there's actually a message; this isn't from the President or anything. I don't want to say who it's from or something, but I found it super powerful, so I'm just going to pull it up. This message to me, it hit me like, "Woah".
It said, "We're adopting Bitcoin because it creates a better ecosystem for all business and entrepreneurs to build and innovate. We encourage all to build on this network. As a country, El Salvador is adopting the Bitcoin standard and will remain Bitcoin only".
Now, to be clear, that's not from the President, it's not representing anybody; this is just somebody who is working within the country, they may be a bank, they may be whatever; but anyway, to give any insight into my conversations with them, I don't want what they're doing to be co-opted by people with maybe ill intentions and malicious intent and I don't want the work that's been done by Bitcoin Beach and just the pure bravery that this government has, and what they stand for, and what they're doing for society and humanity, to be taken and stolen and the narrative to be co-opted. So, that's my inside scoop on conversations and advice I've had.
Like I said before, shitcoins don't make any sense. It implies spill-over levels of inflation that are similar to the Federal Reserve with people creating coins for those that are vegetarian and things that don't make any sense; and that it doesn't improve an open monetary network by introducing monetary networks that are unreliable, not censorship resistant, highly centralised and co-optive and then also, aren't interoperable. So, they understand that.
Peter McCormack: You're so close-minded, you damn maxi, you; you need to be op-minded, Jack! Listen, it is what it is, it's an exciting project here. I know you've already mentioned the Core guys, the hard work people have put in years ahead of this. We should probably also give a shout out to the Lightning guys who've been working on this for years as well, and also give a shout out to anyone who stood hard, strong, firm with their Bitcoin beliefs.
I struggle to understand toxicity at times. I do sometimes think it goes over the top; but at the same time, you can't have a monetary network, a free, open monetary network like Bitcoin without it being defended. I've come to understand that myself; I think it takes some time. But for a country to be able to adopt this standard, they need to know there is a group of people behind them defending it from scammers, those try to co-opt it, those trying to influence it and long may that continue, actually.
Jack Mallers: Yeah, so the way I view it is that Bitcoin solves one of humanity's longest problems, which is money. And I view money as a basic human freedom, and financial inclusion and financial access a basic human freedom.
So, there are human freedoms that have been in serious jeopardy for God knows how many years, and whether you're an anon on Twitter, whether you're a Lightning Network developer, whether you wrote the Lightning Network paper and are no longer involved, contribute to Bitcoin Core; if you're Jorge, Chimbera, Renato, Mike in El Zonte that gave the world a little bit of hope and that drive and commitment into doing this long before anyone thought it was possible; all of that is an effort to reinstil human freedom and push the world forward and give humanity a higher quality of life and higher standards, and ultimate financial inclusion and freedom.
I think the intensity that everyone comes with embodies that, is that we're all working and striving for what we believe is going to make the world a better place. I mean, I've said this before, but I think as a human being, you ultimately want two things inherently, no matter who you are: you want to be part of something bigger than yourself, and so that's just not living your life alone, right. That could be starting a family, that could be starting a business, it could be joining a company that you're really into, it could be being part of a men's league basketball team; just being part of something bigger than yourself as an individual. And then, working towards something that will last longer than you will, and that's leaving a legacy. That's, when you die, the work you've contributed to the planet Earth is still alive and still moving forward, and that's contributing to society, to human species, and leaving a legacy and doing good time on the planet.
I think bitcoiners embody both of those things. It's being part of this community, being a cyber hornet, being part of this distributed network and ultimately defending the best tool humanity's ever conceived and the best tool that allows us to reinstil human freedoms without any central party saying otherwise, and pushing the world forward in the right direction. And when we all die, Bitcoin will still be here. So, it's the ultimate opportunity as a human.
Some people write code, some people start community projects, some people found businesses, some people have anon Twitter accounts and spend 30 minutes a day on Bitcoin and don't pay attention much at all. But all of it, everyone deserves credit. And this is not about any single company. I've no commercial relationship with the government. Strike is competing in the free and open market and participating on this open monetary network just like everybody else. If there's a competing Lightning business that wants to integrate with the bank, you should fly to El Salvador and give them a call.
Everyone should just be tremendously proud of this moment, because I think it's a timestamp where humanity improved. And we all fought for this and defended, what if Bitcoin hard-forked? And it was unsure the strength of the monetary policy and the resiliency of the network. What if Lightning didn't exist and people like Elizabeth Stark and Joseph and Tadge and Blockstream and the Eclair folks, what if they didn't take on the ambitious plan that is solving the variable time and the variable cost of making a Bitcoin transaction and building the infrastructure that is now the Layer 2? What if Bitcoin Core developers conceded to all the death threats that Roger Ver gave and all the abuse that they took over the years when Bitcoin was in a bull and a bear market? What if they gave in and gave up and went and took a job at Facebook?
What if Mike Peterson didn't work day and night at Bitcoin Beach and Jorge and Renato and Chimbera and that whole team? For two years, they fought with no spotlight and they don't have bank accounts and they were fighting for financial inclusion, because they needed it; not because they were shiny and looked cool, but because this was, not to be dramatic, but like life or death. It was, do you want to succumb to the bullies that are the existing intimidators in the financial system, or are you going to plug into hope? What if they didn't do that? What if they found it easier to just fish and give in to the fact that, "My life sucks because of where I was born and who I am"? That's stupid, that's fucked up. And what if you and I didn't go to El Salvador; maybe it's easier…
I get acquisition offers for Strike every day. I'm not fucking selling; I'm not doing this for money. What if you and I sold? You could sell What Bitcoin Did to Spotify, or whatever. I could fucking sell Strike tomorrow. What if we gave up?
Peter McCormack: I had an offer last year.
Jack Mallers: Right, so everyone, this is a collective, distributed, decentralised fight for human freedom, for equality of life for all, for inclusion financially and it's by the people, for the people by the people, and it's bigger than any one company, it's bigger than any one individual. I'll take all the death threats I'm getting and all the abuse I'm getting online. As much as I tell myself as a kid, I'm a grown man and I'm a warrior and I take it all to the fucking face. Bring it on, because you're not going to derail me from my passion for fighting for what's right; no way. And, I'm proud of everyone, so that's my speech.
Peter McCormack: Listen, brother, I told you this was like a coming-of-age thing in certain ways. I don't mean it in a condescending way; I'm telling you as my friend and brother and someone I've been through some things with. I watch you; you call yourself a kid, but a kid doesn't write a bill for a government, or help write a bill, or doesn't do the things you've done. You are a man and you're a grown man and you've done some fucking impressive shit.
I know it might sound condescending, but I'm really proud of you, man; I'm blown away by the things you've done. I was a fucking moron at your age. I mean, I still am a fucking moron, but the stuff you've done, it's brilliant, I'm proud of you, it's amazing. There's so much opportunity here now and I would say to people, there are a lot of people spreading misinformation and putting shit up on Twitter. It's like, "Fucking come down here". I've been coming for nearly two years. Come down here; there's people been coming for two years; plebs, way before the shitcoin scammers, helping out, supporting what's going on here.
Come down, come help, because when I met with the President, the thing that really stood out to me, the question I asked him was, "How can we all help?" and he said, "This has to work. This can't fail; this has to work". So, come down here, spend some sats, meet the people, support the project, provide education, translate it into Spanish. We can all contribute to this. I mean, it's exciting, it's exciting times, dude; yeah.
Jack Mallers: Yeah. I mean, I appreciate it and I don't think about that.
Peter McCormack: I do.
Jack Mallers: As a company, we keep on, we do our job and we improve the world through the software we write and through the opinions and principles we hold dear to us. But I think all this stuff is going to be solved with time. I think that people are excited and right now, I'm not spending my time on Twitter. The way to solve the Tether FUD is to finish our integration with all the banks in the country and all the cashpoints for those that are unbanked, and show people the power of this open monetary network and just the pure experience that you can get financially by plugging in.
So, that's what I spend my time on and I'm so proud of my team, because we're still working with a lot of professional athletes; we're going to launch in Europe; there's a huge announcement I'm about to make; and we move forward and this is all part of our mission. We're not like hyper-focussed and dedicating everything to El Salvador; we're another company that has a mission of improving financial freedom and financial inclusivity through this open network, and I think time just solves it all and cypherpunks write code.
So, yeah, I'm actually working on helping price some volcano bonds, so there's a sound bite for you! So, yeah, I optimise myself around the company mission. I think the company mission improves the world and I think time's going to fix this all. People are just excited.
Peter McCormack: Well listen, Jack; one country is a target, two is a movement, ten is a gang. It seems like there's a lot of interest now. We're seeing laser eyes from Central and South American politicians popping up. This has started something, sparked something. It's incredible to see. There was a long time where I would hear about hyperbitcoinisation and I'd be like, "Yeah, come on. I get what you're saying, but come on".
The reality is in front of us now; this could happen. Economic freedom and human freedom can be brought to the world through Bitcoin and Bitcoin Beach started this; you're part of it; there are so many people part of it; all the people who've worked on Bitcoin Core and Lightning in the past; all the people who've stood up and defended Bitcoin while shitcoiners shout at them and yell at them. So many people are part of this, but this is a real historic moment and a game changer and big congratulations you. Dylan, just massive shout to Dylan. He's a big part of this and the team you have at Strike. Thank you for letting me be part of this.
You know what, I'm sure there's some things we need to talk about with Strike; we can do that another day. I think this is an interview that lives healthy on its own telling this story. I wish you the best, you are my good friend as well as your family and if you ever need anything, you shout me and I'll be there, I'll support you in everything you can do and peace out, my man.
Jack Mallers: Yeah, and I just want to take 30 seconds. I appreciate it, peace out and to the community. You know, I'm living in a hotel under an alias because I'm trying to enhance my security and stuff. All the love and support you guys are giving me, I'm going to start crying again, although everyone's seen my tears enough. I fucking love you guys and just all the tweets and encouragement and stuff; just know that I read it and it means the world to me.
We achieved something great together as a distributed network and a distributed community and I want everyone to know just how appreciate I am of the support I get; it means the world and allows me to keep going. So, thank you to everyone, thank you to Peter and see you on the other side.
Peter McCormack: All right, brother. Take care, see you soon.
