An Open Letter to Strike and Jack Mallers

Your viewers on JMS have been asking you for Bitcoin education; the best wallet, KYC, self-custody setup, why Bitcoin is the best money, why Bitcoin over shitcoins. You’ve been answering these questions personally, uploading product tutorials to your own channel, and fielding the same ballpark of questions in Q&A every week. You mentioned you might need to hire some of your viewers to build out content and education properly.

I’m writing to tell you that person exists and I’m it.

My name is Keith Meola. I’m a Bitcoin educator, podcast host, and founder of North Jersey Bitcoin. I’ve been a Strike user for over 2 years, living my life on the Bitcoin Standard thanks to you guys. I went down the rabbit hole in early 2024 strapped with an all-in personality and no background in finance, development, or media. I came up for food with thousands of hours of research behind me, a comprehensive Bitcoin guide read by people around the world, a podcast, a local Bitcoin meetup, and a website that has become my proof-of-work. I’ve been teaching Bitcoin informally at meetups, at the rock gym, and in conversations across 6 countries. Not for money, but out of passion and a desire to spread Bitcoin far and wide; to everyone.

I’m not a developer. I’m not a finance person. I’m not a content creator chasing views. I’m the common man who went obsessively deep and came back with a flashlight. I can reach the people that Strike needs to reach, because I was one of them not long ago.

Strike has built the infrastructure for someone to live on the Bitcoin Standard. The problem is that, in my experience introducing Strike to people, most don’t understand what they have, why it matters, or how the pieces connect. They use a fraction of the product. They’ve never heard of the auto-withdrawal feature. They’re curious about self-custody but too anxious to take the leap. They know Bitcoin is good but can’t explain it to their spouse, their business partner, or their skeptical friend.

The demand for education is documented and public — it shows up in your Q&A every single week. A viewer in Portugal asked you directly in the latest JMS: “Can you eventually explain, step by step, the best way to set up and use Bitcoin — the best wallet, KYC, everything.” Others have asked why Bitcoin is the best money, why Bitcoin over shitcoins, how to think about self-custody. These questions keep coming because they’re never fully answered in a format people can reference and return to. A weekly Q&A is great for the people watching live, but it doesn’t help the person who has the same question 3 months later.

You’ve been filling this gap personally by uploading tutorials to your own channel, and answering education questions in every show. Which I know you genuinely enjoy. However, that’s a founder doing education work that deserves a dedicated function. The market is asking for it. It’s time to build it properly.

Strike Learn has categories but no direction and no guidance. It’s an info dump, not a thought-out learning and education path. There’s no progression from confused newcomer to confident Bitcoiner, no sense of where to start, and a muddy connection between the educational content and Strike’s actual products.

Confused customers likely churn. Unguided customers never discover the full product suite. Uneducated customers can’t refer Strike with conviction. Many of the questions that could have been answered by a guide become support tickets. I view River as Strike’s main competitor; they also have a dump of educational articles. However, what they don’t have is a thought-out and well developed Education and Community platform. This could be the reason someone chooses Strike and stays.

A Bitcoin Education and Community function at Strike: three pillars.

Not a dump of articles. A structured learning pathway organized around the questions users are actually asking. Understanding Money. Understanding Bitcoin. Understanding Custody. Living on Bitcoin. Understanding Lightning and Layer 2s. Strike Products. Bitcoin Myths and FUD. The Bitcoin Maxi Corner.

Every question your viewers ask in Q&A, every tutorial you’ve uploaded, every recurring support ticket, all of it gets a permanent, searchable, evergreen home. Every article connects the Bitcoin education to Strike’s products. The custody section walks through every facet of self-custody in a foolproof way, with links to fee-free withdrawals and the auto-withdrawal feature. The Living on Bitcoin section shows the power of saving in and using bitcoin, and guides users in how direct deposit, bill pay, and the loan/LoC product fit together into a coherent Bitcoin financial life. The education and the product become inseparable.

Jack, you’ve answered many of the questions Strike users ask, across conferences, firesides and Q&A sessions. That content exists and it’s excellent. It should be findable and indexed inside Strike Learn rather than scattered across YouTube — letting new users benefit from years of public education without having to find it themselves.

Built into this architecture is a progression system — Stacker, Sovereign, Maximalist — that gives users a sense of journey and achievement. Complete a level, pass a knowledge check, earn something real. A sat reward deposited to your Strike account. A Strike Bitaxe stand. Eventually, when the Strike store ships (ideally…soon?), merch you earned by knowing things instead of just spending money. A Strike Maximalist shirt means something. It says you did the work. It says you understand Bitcoin. It says Strike is where you learned it.

Every Bitcoiner has an origin story. Strike should be part of more of them.

A monthly Bitcoin Education Call; open to all Strike users, no product agenda. Pure Bitcoin. One topic per call. Open Q&A at the end. This call signals that Strike’s commitment to Bitcoin education is genuine. A product funnel isn’t the way, but rather a real investment in the financial sovereignty of the users. Recorded and indexed in the relevant Learn section so every call builds the library.

A separate quarterly Strike Live session; a genuine product deep-dive with Q&A. The kind of content you’ve been creating yourself on your channel, built into a regular structured format so it scales beyond what a founder can sustain alone. You can create the most thorough and detailed tutorial, yet people will still have questions and need help.

Before anyone files a support ticket, they should be able to ask: does a Strike guide, video, or community call answer this? That question, built into the support flow, should reduce ticket volume over time. Not only that, but it treats users as intelligent people capable of learning rather than problems to be routed, and better yet, saves everyone time.

As you know, the single biggest leap in a Bitcoiner’s journey is self-custody. It’s also the most important, being the moment a person takes self-responsibility seriously and actually owns their bitcoin. Strike and you actively encourage this through fee-free withdrawals, the auto-withdrawal threshold, and your comments on JMS. Unfortunately, anxiety and second-guessing delay most people, sometimes for months (I know some). They delay because they don’t want to make an irreversible mistake. A human who has done it themselves, can walk someone through it calmly, and can answer any question they may have. The internet is full of scammers and dishonest people. Strike users shouldn’t need to resort to Google to get answers and assurance, while worrying if they’re being tricked or not.

I’m proposing this as a paid add-on for users who want personalized guidance, and as a free perk for high-volume loyal users who have earned it. Strike’s best customers deserve a human touch point that rewards their loyalty and deepens their Bitcoin sovereignty.

Strike already partners with Bitkey. Extending support to more wallets like Coinkite and Trezor would make Strike the only place in the Bitcoin space where a user gets hardware-agnostic, personalized self-custody guidance from a human who knows Bitcoin deeply. Different wallets for different people with individual threat models. Strike’s support team handles product issues. This service handles the Bitcoin journey. They’re complementary, not overlapping.

This service connects directly to Strike’s lending and loan products. A user who understands self-custody understands why they’d borrow against some of their Bitcoin rather than sell it. Strike has built the infrastructure for someone to never sell their Bitcoin while still living their life. By not selling and stacking harder, withdrawals to self-custody will inevitably increase. Most users don’t know that yet. Education is what fully rounds out the products, and is what makes Strike’s vision legible to the people living inside it.

An educated Strike user should use more products, stay longer, refer more people, and cost less to support. More than that, they should feel like they belong to a greater community. The referral that comes from “this app has low fees” is weak. The referral that comes from “Strike is where I finally understood Bitcoin and it changed how I think about money” is permanent.

Every Bitcoiner needed to start somewhere. There are a lot of places to learn Bitcoin — books, podcasts, YouTube channels. Strike could be the home base. The place where someone’s Bitcoin education is anchored, progressed, and rewarded. Where the journey from “I just downloaded this app” to “I understand money for the first time” happens inside Strike’s ecosystem. That kind of loyalty isn’t built by zero fees or useful products. It’s built by being the company that changed how someone sees the world.

You’ve spoken about how you want to be an actual, relatable person to the Bitcoin community. One that interacts with the common person, speaks their mind, keeps it real, and can be a personable face for Strike. The Education and Community function is how Strike acquires these same characteristics as more than just a company serving its customers.

Someone will ask “why not AI?”, and it’s a valid question. However, AI can only generate content (and slop). It cannot sit with a confused person at the most anxious moment of their Bitcoin journey and help them through it. It cannot build trust or turn skepticism into conviction. It cannot represent Strike at a meetup in New Jersey and orange-pill a room full of people who came in hostile and left curious. That requires a human. That’s what I do.

Strike has built the products for someone to live a complete Bitcoin life. Education is what makes that life visible to the people who need it most.

I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole in early 2024 with an obsessive personality and no background in finance, development, or media. I came up for food with thousands of hours of research behind me, a comprehensive Bitcoin guide, a podcast, a local Bitcoin meetup, and a website that has become my proof of work. I’ve been teaching Bitcoin informally at meetups, at the rock gym, in conversations across 6 countries because I believe in it and am passionate about it, not because I’m paid to.

I’m not credentialed. I’m not a developer. I’m the person your users are, or perhaps, who they were, before they learned. That’s exactly why I can reach them.

I have a clear point of view on what’s needed and why. I’m sure Strike has conversations happening internally — user data, support ticket trends, product roadmap — that would shape how this gets built. I’d rather bring my ideas to that conversation than pretend I have all the answers from the outside.

Strike has built something remarkable. I want to help the world understand what it is.

~Keith Meola
#950402
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