| | | Good afternoon. The 4th halving has come and gone, with the annual inflation rate falling to just 0.85%. Just like that, bitcoin is now harder money than gold, which sees around 2.3% of supply mined each year. | Today’s Big Stories:
⚡️ Strike Launches in Europe
🏦 Stacking sats just got easier
🐙 Kraken IPO Incoming? | Today's newsletter is 1,390 words, a 8-minute good read. |
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Strike Brings Bitcoin Lightning Network to Europe |
Strike, a nifty bitcoin payments app led by Jack Mallers, has officially launched its services across Europe, marking a significant milestone in Bitcoin Lightning adoption and functionality on the continent. |
Why It Matters: Strike’s expansion enhances the utility of bitcoin beyond just a store of value. The app offers a suite of features enabling users to buy, sell, send, and manage BTC efficiently, leveraging the speed and low cost of the Lightning Network. |
The company’s European launch – capturing the world's third-largest economy – aligns with the bitcoin-maxi vision of making BTC a globally accessible and usable currency. |
Key Features for European Users: |
Buy, sell, send, and withdraw bitcoin without any limits: Deposit or withdraw funds to and from your bank account, self-custody wallets, and any bitcoin or lightning wallet address.
Schedule recurring purchases: Great for dollar cost averaging (DCA). Stack sats hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly – the choice is yours.
P2P transfers: It’s sort of like Venmo, but with currency conversion optionality. You can send funds to any other Strike user around the world instantly. Your friend can then receive the value as BTC, Euro (in Europe), USD (in the U.S.), or USDT (in supported global regions).
Send money globally: Strike customers in Europe can now use the app to save money on remittances. You can send value across borders to supported regions including Africa, Philippines, Mexico, and Vietnam, etc. with the funds being delivered as local currency. |
The news comes as Strike has expanded its services over the past year to reach over 70 countries across the globe, from the U.S. to Latin America and Africa. |
Bigger Picture: Bitcoin's potential to integrate seamlessly with existing financial systems is becoming increasingly evident. While the rollout is still in its early days, it’s beautifully designed apps like Strike that makes using bitcoin much easier and inch us closer to an open, global financial infrastructure. |
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Block (SQ) Announces Tool to Help Entrepreneurs Stack Bitcoin |
More adoption news incoming… |
What Happened: Today Block (SQ), which rebranded from Square in 2021, announced the launch of Bitcoin Conversions – a new feature allowing millions of Square merchants to convert a portion of their daily sales into Bitcoin. |
Here’s the gist: Companies who opt-in to the feature will be able to transfer 1-10% of their daily merchant sales to their personal Cash App account. The percentage will then be converted into bitcoin at the end of the day. |
Block will take a 1% fee for every conversion made Merchants who use the feature will have full control over their bitcoin with the ability to transfer it to other wallets or sell it at any time from their Cash App account. |
Why it matters: While there may be a day in the future where transactions take place using bitcoin, today is not that day. Fiat, like USD, is still overwhelmingly the means of commerce. |
But unless you are a large company working with an exchange with an institutional arm, saving some percentage of your profits in non-inflating cryptoassets is nearly impossible. Hell, even the Coinbase/Shopify integration page 404s as of today. |
Block’s announcement though will allow millions of entrepreneurs to “opt-in” to bitcoin, further entrenching the asset as a means of saving for individuals as opposed to a “get rich quick” asset. The mental shift of converting profits into bitcoin, as opposed to trading in and out, shouldn’t be overlooked. |
What else? In a separate announcement this week, Block announced that it is working on it’s own bitcoin mining operation and had finished the development of its own standalone three-nanometer bitcoin mining chip. |
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Two Forbes 30U30 Founders Transforming Mental Wellness |
Forbes 30 Under 30 winners founded Aura to solve the $100B problem - mental wellbeing. |
Aura has quickly grown to 8 million users & 100k+ paying subscribers, and attracted investments from legendary Silicon Valley VCs & executives from Spotify, Facebook, and Apple. |
The best part? You can invest now before the opportunity ends in a few days. |
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Kraken IPO Incoming? |
The second largest US crypto exchange, Kraken, continues to ramp up its offerings. |
Case in point: Last week, the company acquired Tradestation’s crypto arm giving it access to the company’s money transmitting licenses in 47 states. |
Since January, Kraken has been on our shortlist for companies to file for an IPO this year. While the company hasn’t specifically stated that they are pushing for an IPO (they say both public and private market fundraising is on the table), we can’t help but predict one is on the way… |
Putting profits to work: The company’s $100 million venture fund is beginning to make moves including leading investment rounds such as Usual Labs’ $7 million round.
European expansion: In February, the company secured a Dutch license, allowing the exchange to offer services in the Netherlands.
Bring on the institutions: In February, the company launched a platform specifically for institutional investors. The platform will allow Kraken to compete directly with Coinbase which currently controls more than 90% of the institutional market.
Wallet Expansion: Last week, the company released a self-custodial mobile wallet to take on the likes of Metamask and Coinbase. Kraken went one step further though by open sourcing the entire code base. |
Lastly, we also can’t forget the fact that the exchange loaded up its C-suite with seasoned executives and IPO talent in 2023. |
What’s Stopping Them? |
The road to Kraken’s S-1 is likely going to be bumpy. |
Kraken is still facing down an SEC lawsuit. And while the company believes they will win and the SEC has been losing crypto cases again and again, the fact is worth noting. |
Remember that Coinbase wasn’t sued by the SEC until after they IPO’d. Kraken will need to settle this before they can move forward. |
But here at CoinSnacks we are rooting for Kraken. They seem to be good people, trying to do the right thing for bringing financial freedom to people around the world. |
Even when there was pressure to cut off Russian accounts, the company stood firm: |
| 1/6 I understand the rationale for this request but, despite my deep respect for the Ukrainian people, @krakenfx cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so. Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent. #NYKNYC | Mykhailo Fedorov @FedorovMykhailo I'm asking all major crypto exchanges to block addresses of Russian users. It's crucial to freeze not only the addresses linked to Russian and Belarusian politicians, but also to sabotage ordinary users. |
| | | Feb 28, 2022 | | | | | | 4.97K Likes 1.08K Retweets 442 Replies |
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We are wishing them the best of luck. |
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| Gold has a $14 trillion market cap with zero merchant adoption. So why do people think Bitcoin can only have value if it’s used for coffee payments? | | | Apr 24, 2024 | | | | | | 224 Likes 27 Retweets 44 Replies |
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