Announcing the Strike API
Yo. Today I am unbelievably excited to announce the Strike API and Strike’s first API customer, Twitter. Today, Twitter enables free, instant, global payments for their users with their integration of the Strike API. Starting today, Twitter will allow all iOS users around the globe to send tips over the Lightning Network. The Strike Tips integration, allowing users to receive global tips with their Twitter account, will begin to roll out on iOS today and expand to all users including Android over the coming weeks.
At Strike, our mission is to build a more financially connected world. We accomplish this by making Bitcoin and the Lightning Network easily accessible and usable. Our API enables marketplaces, merchants, businesses, developers, and more, to offer instant, free, global payments to anyone, at any time — improving financial access and enhancing financial experiences for everyone in the world.
Today, we take a giant leap forward in growing global interoperability with the world’s first open monetary network, Bitcoin. Today, we continue our march towards migrating the world onto the singular monetary standard, Bitcoin. Today, we launch the Strike API, making existing payments everywhere in the world cheaper and faster, unlocking a whole new set of payment use cases never seen before.
The Story
On its face, it may seem like Twitter has simply added another payment network to their Tips product. Well, that could not be more wrong. Twitter’s integration with the Strike API, Bitcoin, and the Lightning Network carries much more depth than what meets the eye. This payment network is no Paypal; it solves a problem facing internet companies and addresses one of the most outdated problems for the World Wide Web as a whole.
What the hell am I talking about?
Well, Twitter built one product that anyone in the world can use called… Twitter. Using Twitter, I can tweet at someone in Central America, that person in Central America can tweet at someone in Europe, that person in Europe can tweet at someone in Africa, so on and so forth. Anyone in the world can tweet at anyone in the world. Anyone in the world can receive tweets from anyone in the world. Communication between users on Twitter is instant, free, and borderless.
Now, Twitter users can communicate linguistically in an instant, free, and borderless fashion. However, can they communicate financially while achieving those same properties? Simple answer: No. Now, extrapolate this idea to any internet company; Facebook, TikTok, Google, etc., and you realize the open standard of communication that is so important in connecting us all doesn’t have a financial counterpart to close the loop. Internet companies can’t deliver financial experiences to their users on a singular global standard in the same way they can for communication. That is, until now.
Before the internet, communication lived in independent, closed, bifurcated, inefficient, expensive, local networks. With the invention of the internet, the world was given a singular, open communications protocol for everyone.
What followed was the dematerialization of the independent, closed communication networks onto a singular, open, global communications network: the internet. The internet allowed the participants of the world to converse through a uniform standard whereby access to communicate was the same. Long gone were the days where communication had geographic, time, or region-specific limitations. Communication became borderless, instant, and accessible to anyone who opted into the network. The internet allowed people, communities, and companies to launch a product anywhere in the world to anyone in the world.
Gradually, then suddenly, flying birds with notes became email, your social network became Facebook, your TV became YouTube, sharing memories became Instagram, and the global conversation became Twitter.
Unfortunately, a limitation for the internet was that monetary networks remained independent, closed, bifurcated, inefficient, expensive, local networks. There’s Western Union and TransferWise for remittance, VISA and Mastercard for processing, Shopify and Stripe for online commerce, Venmo and CashApp if you’re in the US, Monzo and Revolut if you’re in the UK, so on and so forth. These networks carry with them differing levels of fixed costs, inefficiencies, counterparty risk, settlement delays, fees, and most importantly access; if I live in the US I have access to many of them. If I live in El Salvador? Pound sand.
That is, until Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. With Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, the world now has its first open, global, singular monetary protocol for everyone on the planet. A natively digital bearer instrument in bitcoin, and an open monetary network in Lightning, together achieve instant, free, global cash finality anywhere in the world. The communication protocol for the world now has a monetary network that achieves the same properties. What the internet did for communication, Bitcoin and the Lightning Network is doing for money.
Now, what if an internet company took their existing global communications network and made it interoperable with the world’s global monetary network? What if an existing online network that spanned the globe integrated a monetary network that was inclusive to everyone? What if allowing people to settle value with each other was as easy as sending tweets to each other? What would that look like?
It would look like this.
In the above demo, I sent a $10 tip from my house in Chicago, USA to my friend David in San Salvador, El Salvador. The payment settled instantly for no fee. The singular, open, monetary network that allowed me to send an instant, free, cross-border payment to David is the same singular, open monetary network that allowed David to immediately use that money to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks as soon as he got the Twitter notification that I had sent him money.
Here is a screen recording from David’s phone as he receives an instant, free, cross-border payment with Twitter and then immediately buys a cup of coffee.
Monetary history.
$10 in my house in the U.S. became a hot and tasty Cafè Americano in another country in less than a minute. Settlement was instant. Payments were free. There were no required intermediaries. It all happened between three independent parties that had no commercial relationship with each other.
How? Are Western Union and TransferWise behind the scenes when money is crossing borders? Are VISA and MasterCard behind the scenes when that money is used to buy coffee? No.
It all happened over the same monetary standard that accomplishes all of those use cases, and because of the Strike API, it happened over one of the world’s largest social networks, Twitter.
With the Strike API, every online network, marketplace, business, merchant, developer, and more can escrow value between each other globally, instantly, trustlessly, and at little to no cost. Why can’t your social media accounts be used to checkout at Costco? Why can’t your Venmo account pay your friends back for beer on CashApp? Why can’t you use your existing social media networks to remit money? Today, closed networks can’t communicate with one another. But, how far away are we from a world where they can?
On a singular, global, open monetary standard, everyone is connected no matter your country, region, currency, or platform. A more connected financial world.
What the internet did for communication, Bitcoin and the Lightning Network is doing for money. The Lightning Network is dematerializing all segregated, independent, bifurcated monetary networks onto one single global standard. Remittance, online commerce, brick and mortar processing, marketplace commerce, and so on are no different on the Lightning Network. They all interoperate around a singular, global, standard.
The internet was not another communication network in the world, the internet is the communications network for the world. Bitcoin and the Lightning Network is not another payment network in the world, the Bitcoin and Lightning Network is the payments network for the world.
Integrating Strike’s API turns a social media platform into one of the best remittance experiences in the world, one of the greatest global creator marketplaces in the world, one of the greatest global payment experiences in the world, one of the best global micropayment marketplaces in the world, and allows an internet company to interoperate with the monetary standard for the world, enabling global payments for its users.
The Strike API: Your gateway to the monetary network for the world.
The Twitter Integration — How It Works
How does our integration with Twitter work? As simple as can be, of course. Let’s take a look.
Receiving instant, free, global tips on Twitter
When a Twitter user, with Tips enabled, navigates to their Tips settings, they’ll see a Bitcoin Lightning wallet section.
From here, a user simply selects Strike, enters their Strike username, and hits save.
Once a user links their Strike username they can begin receiving instant, free payments from anywhere in the world with their Twitter account.
I’m dead serious. It’s that easy.
Now, any creator on Twitter can receive instant, free, global payments from anyone in the world. No matter what country they send from, what currency they are using, what wallet they have installed, etc., the payment gets settled instantly, for free, and the creator receives instantly spendable US Dollars in their account.
Sending instant, free, global tips on Twitter
What about sending a payment, instantly, over Twitter to anyone in the world? Thought you’d never ask.
When navigating to a user’s Twitter profile that has Bitcoin Lightning Tips enabled, you’ll notice a new Tip icon!
To send money to someone else on Twitter, simply tap the Tip icon. You’ll be prompted to then enter the amount you’d like to send and be given the option to add a comment.
After entering the amount you’d like to send, you’ll see an “Open Wallet” button inside of Twitter. Behind the scenes, using the Strike API, Twitter generated an open-standard, interoperable Lightning invoice for you to pay.
Clicking “Open Wallet” will open any interoperable wallet and/or service on your phone, which you can then use to make the payment. When I paid my friend David in San Salvador in the demo above, I used my non-custodial Muun wallet.
Because Twitter has integrated the open monetary network for the world, any service that also is on the same network can interact with its users monetarily. I could have used my Strike, Muun Wallet, my Lightning node running over Tor in my basement, etc.
With Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, there is one singular monetary standard for the world to achieve instant settlement. Once you integrate that standard and opt-in to the network, you’re forever connected to everyone else.
Open networks dematerialize closed networks.
Open networks win.
What’s Next
Today, the world moves further towards migrating onto the singular monetary standard, Bitcoin. Today, one of the largest global networks on the web became interoperable with an open monetary network inclusive to all. Today, Twitter enabled instant, free, global payments for their users by utilizing Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.
Soon, any internet network, online marketplace, merchant, business, developer, and more will have access to cheaper, faster, global payments of any size with the Strike API.
We’re currently working with a select group of partners, ranging from small businesses to the largest companies in the world, and will continually rollout more integrations over the coming weeks. If you’d like early access to the Strike API, you can apply on our website here.
In the coming months, we plan to make the Strike API public to all and expand both the Strike App and the Strike API to more regions around the world.
What the internet did for communication, Bitcoin and the Lightning Network is doing for money. It’s safe to say that the great communications dematerialization onto the open communications standard for the world changed everything.
Well, the great monetary dematerialization onto the open monetary standard for the world has begun.
Buckle up.
Thanks
Ok, everyone, that’s all I have for today. You’ll hear much more from me soon. Maybe now that we’ve announced the Strike API and launched our integration with Twitter, I can finally publicly release Pay Me In Bitcoin 😃.
As of today, with my Twitter account having Tips enabled, anyone in the world can now tip my Twitter account. I will be forwarding all of my Twitter Tips to the Human Rights Foundation every week, with the exception of $10.
Why the $10?
Well, that’s how much a six-pack of beer costs. For the foreseeable future, every weekend, I’ll grab some beer and answer any questions you have for me on Twitter to say thanks for the tip.
Have a question about Strike, Bitcoin, the NBA, my celebrity crush, or anything your heart desires, ask away. Tweet at me your questions and use #AskJM. No question is off limits.
To the Bitcoin community, thank you. Strike was founded less than two years ago, and today we’ve helped onboard Twitter onto Bitcoin. However, I’m not going to lie, it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. Your support means the world and motivates me to keep going when the going gets tough. Love y’all.
You can contact me, and now tip me, @JackMallers on Twitter or give me a ping at jack@strike.me via email. You can register for early access to the Strike API at strike.me/api. After some more integrations, we’ll release the Strike API publicly to the world.
We’ll talk soon. Trust me.
Much love. Be easy.
Deuces ✌️ ✊ 🍻
Updated October 1st, 2021
