Strike Adds Buy Bitcoin Tab – Goes Head to Head with Crypto Exchanges
Lightning Network payments platform Strike has added recently a bitcoin buying tab to its app, emphasizing minimal fees for these purchases, and going head to head with crypto exchanges.
Lightning Network payments platform Strike, and the company’s CEO, Jack Mallers who recently made headlines as the primary partner in El Salvador’s decision to declare bitcoin as legal tender, has announced it is adding a bitcoin buying tab to its app with a goal of minimizing the transaction fees.
Mallers wrote in the official announcement:
“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.”
Mallers emphasized the tab as something he wanted to offer with as little markup as possible, citing Coinbase’s fees of up to 4% on such investments as contrary to the Bitcoin ethos.
Mallers continued:
“It’s going to be as cheap and accessible as we can possibly make it. You cannot build a business on charging people to buy open-source money… I’m going to offer buying bitcoin for free, without any shitcoins.”
Initially, Strike will charge no fees for buying bitcoin, as a middleman, but will pass on the market-spread execution cost charged by its partners. According to the announcement, those costs are less than 0.3% to start with, but Mallers expects them to drop below 0.1% “over the coming months” as volume grows and Strike’s partners will charge it less.
Mallers explained that the service will have a 10 BTC cap per single order, and that the tab will initially be released as a beta with a waitlist. Users can hold their bitcoin in the app or withdraw to third-party wallets for which they control the private keys.
The announcement also hinted a potential range of additional functionalities coming to the Strike app, such as automatic dollar-cost averaging (DCA) services, direct deposit splits into bitcoin and more.
The announcement concluded:
“Today, the Bitcoin tab allows you to buy bitcoin. However, the Bitcoin tab lays the foundation for much more. Soon, users will be able to buy bitcoin, get paid in bitcoin, get rewards in bitcoin, round up savings in bitcoin and much more.”
