At the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami, Strike co-founder Jack Mallers announced the Bitcoin payments company was relocating its global headquarters to El Salvador, the first country in the world to declare Bitcoin legal tender.
However, Strike is still maintaining its Chicago headquarters to deal with U.S.-related business operations. Prior to the announcement, the company worked exclusively in three countries: the U.S., El Salvador, and Argentina. Now it’s expanding its global footprint to 65 countries and making El Salvador the capital of the global operations.
Jack Mallers, the CEO of parent company Zap, said the move was prompted by the harsh regulatory environment in the U.S., which has driven many crypto firms offshore in search of more favorable conditions abroad.
“We’re living in a country right now where the SEC is fighting with Brian Armstrong [CEO of Coinbase, America’s largest crypto exchange],” Mallers said at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami. “And we’re going global, headquartered out of El Salvador. It’s really f*****g awesome, it’s really a beautiful thing.”
Earlier this year, Mallers called Bitcoin “the central banking system of the internet.”
Despite El Salvador’s growing embrace of crypto, the country’s leader Nayib Bukele has arrested 66,00 citizens under his watch in a brutal crackdown on gangs since last March. Bukele has declared a “state of exception” politically, which has seen the erosion of civil liberties like due process and press freedom. Some insist that his promotion of Bitcoin is a diversion from increasing authoritarianism at home, but few in the Bitcoin community comment on this, especially as Bukele trumpets the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
“We’re building a place where your kids can live the life you lived when you were a kid,” Bukele said on Twitter earlier this year.
Source : Thestreet
