Jack Mallers

Mallers grew up in Chicago in a family connected to finance and trading. His grandfather, William J. Mallers Sr., helped establish the Chicago Board Options Exchange, while his father, William Mallers Jr., co-founded the brokerage First American Discount Corporation and introduced him to Bitcoin in 2013.

He attended St. John's University in New York but left after about a year to study at Starter School, a full-stack coding bootcamp in Chicago. Before concentrating on Bitcoin, he built applications including a tool for finding wheelchair-accessible transportation and software for personal trainers. He was also a nationally ranked chess player.

Mallers began focusing seriously on the Lightning Network in 2017, seeing its potential to combine Bitcoin's security with faster and easier payments. He introduced Zap as a user-friendly, non-custodial Lightning wallet. The project initially targeted cannabis dispensaries, many of which had difficulty obtaining conventional banking services.

Zap struggled to establish a market among dispensaries and changed direction several times. In 2019, it introduced Olympus, a fiat-to-Bitcoin feature that allowed users to purchase Bitcoin through a bank account, debit card, Zelle, or other payment methods and then use it for Lightning transactions.

In January 2020, Mallers launched Strike as a rebranding of Olympus. The service allowed users to make Lightning payments through a bank account or debit card without setting up a wallet, managing Bitcoin directly, or having previous experience with cryptocurrency.

Strike was designed to let users pay in fiat while using the Lightning Network's speed and lower transaction costs.

Strike expanded internationally in 2021 through a partnership with Bittrex, reaching users in up to 200 countries and adding more cryptocurrencies. It also partnered with Prime Trust for custody and anti-money-laundering compliance. In September 2021, Twitter announced that it would use the Strike API for Bitcoin tipping. Strike's initial partners included Shopify, Blackhawk, and NCR.

Mallers became involved with El Zonte, the Salvadoran community known as Bitcoin Beach, while exploring ways for Strike to address remittance costs and financial access. He spent three months in El Salvador in 2020 studying the initiative and discussing Bitcoin payments and financial inclusion with President Nayib Bukele and members of his administration.

At the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Mallers delivered a speech supporting national Bitcoin adoption while Bukele announced El Salvador's plan to make Bitcoin legal tender. Strike's payment infrastructure was presented as a way to facilitate fast, low-cost cross-border remittances. Mallers has described access to financial systems as a basic human right and has continued to promote Bitcoin as a payments network.

In April 2025, Mallers co-founded Twenty One Capital with backing from Tether, Bitfinex, and SoftBank Group. The company was structured as a Bitcoin-focused public treasury firm and went public through a SPAC merger under the ticker XXI.

The venture extended his work from consumer payments into institutional Bitcoin finance.

Mallers was included in Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for finance in 2021. His public work has centered on reducing the practical barriers to Bitcoin use, particularly through the Lightning Network and applications that allow people to transact without directly managing cryptocurrency.

He has argued that Bitcoin can support financial inclusion, cheaper payments, and broader participation in the global financial system. Strike's development reflects that approach by combining conventional bank balances with Bitcoin-based payment rails.