So… the guy behind a company claiming to move millions of dollars per month starts his big announcement with “Yo”? and the video at the bottom shows him (?) giving the finger to the viewers. Great. very professional and totally trustable.
Thank you @San_Francisco, I think that you made a great work at debunking this scam.
The whole thing is super weird. If they have accounts in US/EU/etc., what do they gain with a two hop through bitcoin to convert currency when they could just go to the FX market. Are the USD/EUR to bitcoin brokers so much cheaper than fx market that it’s worth it? Is settlement quicker?
I guess the 2 CHF for IB would be too much for small transaction, that’s the main reason there’s a bit of batch/netting happening.
In any case from what I’ve heard the whole currency/international transfer field already has razor thin margins (you can see it with revolut starting to increase fees as they move out of the customer acquisition phase), I’m not sure putting btc in the middle can give them an edge (except for marketing).
Jack, the founder of Strike, is a 19yo who defines himself as the “hoodie” against the “suits”. That’s part of the character.
As for Strike, the real innovation is that it is using the layer 2 “lightning” of Bitcoin, which is virtually free and instantaneous. Hence the advantage vs traditional method. Strike is not making money here, that’s not their business model, I think they launched a credit card.
That’s extremely short-sighted, a quick Google search tells me that $28 billion are paid in excessive transfer fees each year. That’s more than a few people.
What’s the part where it would matter? There’s 0 bitcoin transaction except for exchanging for hard currencies right?
I don’t pretend to understand the Lightning network. As far as I do, it’s a network used for processing transactions between two blockchain transactions. Doesn’t that mean that the rapidity and cheapness of it comes at the sacrifice of security? Hence the name “risk management and trading infrastructure” used by Strike?
And if so, what are the guarantees that transactions are processed in a secured manner?
It’s just like netting for traditional banks. At some point it settles on the blockchain but since you can batch several transaction, you can lower fees.
These are good questions and I am not claiming to understand all of lightning either. Also, it solves some issues of Bitcoin but brings other problems (notably around security).
Overall it is a routing channel between two nodes (here two Strike users), you can view it as a payment infrastructure such as swift or sepa. Contrary to layer 1, Lightning is not waiting for new blocks, it processes all payments between nodes and only broadcast them by batch to layer 1 once the transactions are over.
Last time I made a payment with it, I sent $1000 for 10 millisats ($0.00000…01) and it took a few seconds to be confirmed.
It is truly fascinating to me because this technology might allow us to perform stream of payment in the future.
Edit (many typos) : a good parallel is communication, between sending a letter (wire transfer) and sending a message on whatsapp (lightning)
Or between SEPA and Instant SEPA 
The issue isn’t really getting a currency from A to B. It is the exchange of currency $ to CHF.
It’s not very clear (like everything else in that company) but they seem to “solve” the issue by using USDT instead of real dollars…
From their own example:
“Strike then credits the existing user with the USDT to their Strike account. Boom.”
so in the end after converting from fiat to BTC and from BTC to USDT the recipient is left with stablecoins…that he needs to convert to fiat at his own expense if he really wants to use them…lol
Of course it is, check the screenshot from transferwise, thousands in fees and several days to process. For the exchange here, you pay the spot price at market rate between btc and the currency.
Centralised shitcoin euro vs decentralized btc 
No need to resort to childish language, at least that’s not really a way to convince anyone. It’s also possible to have a balanced approach, I appreciate some of the technology behind btc and other cryptocurrencies, doesn’t mean I have to become a fanboy/girl. It’s still possible to recognize that like many things it has pros and cons, and nothing is rarely overwhelmingly superior (not even tesla )
The inflation rate in the eurozone between 2000 and 2020 was 40.89% (1.73% / year), does not work for my fire goal, hence the remark.
As far as technology goes, instant sepa is only playing catch-up.
A deflationary currency would be a bigger hindrance to your fire goal. Nobody cares about 2% inflation (which is somewhat healthy, it’s the target of most central banks), you don’t hold cash as an investment…
I’m also not sure what Strike is really trying to solve if you remove the BTC fan glasses.