Can Bitcoin Actually Become "the Best Money in Human History"? The Jack Mallers Thesis

When Jack Mallers describes Bitcoin as “the best money in human history,” he’s not just making a casual observation. The Strike CEO is articulating a conviction that has driven him to build infrastructure for what he envisions as a fundamentally restructured financial future. His mantra—“If we can fix the money, we can fix the world”—cuts to the heart of a philosophical debate that has animated the Bitcoin movement since Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper.

But how realistic is this vision? And what does Jack Mallers actually mean when he equates Bitcoin with monetary revolution?

The Philosophical Foundations: Why Sound Money Matters

At its core, Mallers’ argument rests on a principle derived from Austrian economics: that monetary stability—not manipulation—forms the bedrock of prosperous societies. The contrast couldn’t be starker. Fiat currencies, managed by central banks, face no theoretical upper limit on expansion. A dollar from 1970 has lost the vast majority of its purchasing power. Bitcoin, by contrast, has a hard cap of 21 million coins, creating artificial scarcity.

This isn’t merely an investment thesis. The sound money argument extends to governance: when money can be devalued at will, it removes incentives for long-term planning, encourages financial speculation over productive work, and ultimately concentrates wealth among those closest to newly printed currency. Fix the money, the reasoning goes, and you address wealth inequality, boom-bust cycles, and the perverse incentives that plague modern economies.

The counterargument is equally compelling: monetary flexibility allows governments to respond to crises, maintain employment during downturns, and manage complex economies. The debate between hard money purists and flexible monetary managers has raged for centuries. Bitcoin, in effect, represents a live experiment in the hard money approach—a test case playing out in real time.

Jack Mallers as Practitioner: Moving Bitcoin Beyond Philosophy

Here’s where Jack Mallers distinguishes himself from other Bitcoin advocates. While many evangelize from the sidelines, Mallers has dedicated Strike to proving that Bitcoin works as everyday payment infrastructure, not just philosophical ideal.

Strike’s infrastructure powers payments on the Lightning Network, enabling fast, near-zero-cost transactions that directly compete with legacy payment rails. The company gained prominence through its role in El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption—providing the Chivo wallet infrastructure and supporting the government’s historic legal tender legislation. Whatever one thinks of El Salvador’s experiment, Jack Mallers positioned Strike at the epicenter of the most ambitious national Bitcoin implementation ever attempted.

The remittances angle deserves particular attention. Cross-border money transfers extract enormous fees from migrant workers sending earnings to families abroad. These aren’t abstract economic losses; they’re meaningful drains on vulnerable populations. By offering Bitcoin-based rails, Strike aims to undercut these fees. For migrant corridors underserved by traditional banking, this represents genuine utility.

More recent product developments—salary receipt in Bitcoin, automatic dollar-Bitcoin conversion—reflect Jack Mallers’ consistent focus: lowering the friction for gradual Bitcoin accumulation without requiring users to navigate cryptocurrency exchanges independently.

The Rhetoric vs. Reality Gap

Yet significant obstacles remain between Mallers’ vision and current implementation. Bitcoin’s volatility poses obvious challenges for wage payments and remittances. Energy consumption and scaling limitations persist. Regulatory uncertainty across jurisdictions creates practical complications. The volatility alone—swings of 10-20% within days—makes Bitcoin’s function as stable value storage questionable in the near term.

Jack Mallers and other Bitcoin advocates counter that these represent developmental challenges rather than fundamental flaws. The technology is still young, they argue. Lightning Network continues improving. Adoption remains in early innings. The gap between theoretical potential and practical utility will narrow through time and innovation.

Critics counter that enthusiastic rhetoric can obscure whether this narrowing actually occurs. Bitcoin remains primarily a speculative asset and store of value, not everyday money. Street vendors in El Salvador have reportedly resisted accepting Bitcoin due to volatility concerns. The practical hurdles prove more formidable than promotional messaging suggests.

Institutional Validation and Conceptual Risk

Bitcoin’s landscape has shifted dramatically. Spot ETFs now provide regulated institutional access. Major financial institutions offer custody and trading services. Corporate treasuries allocate capital to Bitcoin. This infrastructure validates the thesis that Bitcoin represents durable monetary innovation rather than speculative bubble.

Yet this very institutional embrace introduces tensions with Bitcoin’s original ethos. Early Bitcoin advocates valued decentralization and individual sovereignty precisely to escape Wall Street intermediation. As financial institutions embrace Bitcoin, does it retain revolutionary character or become merely another asset class in conventional portfolios?

Jack Mallers’ positioning—emphasizing Bitcoin’s potential to restructure monetary relationships rather than merely serve as investment vehicle—attempts to navigate this tension. Whether Strike and similar projects can maintain this distinction as institutional capital floods the space remains uncertain.

What Comes Next

Bitcoin has survived multiple boom-bust cycles, regulatory assaults, and technical growing pains. Few would have predicted such resilience a decade ago. Whether this durability translates into Mallers’ vision of transformed global monetary relations constitutes the open question.

For Strike specifically, the path forward demands continued product development focused on genuine transaction utility. Moving Bitcoin from “digital gold” narrative to functioning as actual money requires proving it can handle real-world payment friction at scale. The company’s focus on payments, remittances, and salary integration represents an attempt at this proof.

When Jack Mallers proclaims Bitcoin as “the best money in human history,” observers reasonably ask whether this represents premature conclusion or accurate prophecy. The assertion cannot be verified in present conditions; it functions instead as mission statement and bet on a future his work actively attempts to create.

The nature of money and optimal monetary frameworks have occupied economists and philosophers for centuries. Bitcoin introduces a provocative new participant in this ancient conversation. Jack Mallers ensures the discussion remains vigorous and forward-looking. Whether history ultimately validates his conviction or files it alongside countless technological enthusiasms that failed to transform society as promised will determine itself across decades, not quarters.