Alex Adelman puts a little reward into everyday life

Alex Adelman’s introduction to customer incentives came with a stick attached. As a child in North Carolina, he disliked trips to the bank with his father and sister. The lollipop at the end improved matters considerably. Years later, when he needed a name for a company that rewarded people with bitcoin, that small consolation returned as a business proposition. Lolli was a rather cheerful name for an argument about the future of money.

There is something pleasing about a financial technology company borrowing its identity from the least sophisticated object in a bank. Adelman had remembered the part a child actually valued. His later work would repeatedly return to that question: what does the person on the other side of the transaction get out of this?

He co-founded Lolli with Matt Senter in 2018, after their earlier commerce company, Cosmic, had passed through acquisitions by PopSugar and then Ebates. In July 2025, Lolli itself was acquired by the bitcoin venture studio Thesis*. Another business emerged from the transaction: Mirado, the enterprise rewards company Adelman now leads. The sweet has acquired some fairly substantial plumbing.

A shopping cart before the candy

Before bitcoin rewards, there was a familiar irritation: finding something to buy online and being sent somewhere else to complete the purchase. Cosmic’s universal shopping cart was designed to let retailers sell across devices and publishers make their pages shoppable. It gave Adelman a practical education in the connections between merchants, audiences and payments.

He had studied economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. By 2012, he was building Cosmic. A degree provides one vocabulary for commerce; persuading a retailer to use your software provides another. His career would involve a good deal of translation between the two.

In 2013, Target became a retail partner and investor. Adelman and his team spent three months working from the retailer’s Minneapolis headquarters, with access to its development team and executives. The accommodation during negotiations was less corporate: after moving from Omaha, the Cosmic Cart team temporarily stayed in a local youth hostel. Before the launch partners came the bunk beds.

The following year brought a six-minute pitch at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. Target’s connections had helped introduce the startup to blogger networks, including a partnership with Atlantic-Pacific’s Blair Eadie. This was commerce on the pages where people found things they wanted, rather than commerce waiting patiently for them to arrive at a shop.

The useful thing about having done this before

PopSugar acquired Cosmic in 2015. In 2017, the business was acquired again through Ebates, part of Rakuten. That same year, Adelman appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for retail and e-commerce. The recognition attached to a shopping product, before he became closely associated with bitcoin.

These were consequential years for the next company. Adelman and Senter had worked inside online retail and then inside a rewards business. They understood that a merchant would pay for a customer’s purchase, and that some of that payment could go back to the customer. Lolli changed what the customer received.

The founders also had relationships. A network of retailers is a distinctly useful possession when your next product requires retailers. Adelman’s move into bitcoin carried years of commercial experience with it. The intellectual destination had changed; many of the people he needed to call were already in his address book.

A smaller first step into bitcoin

Lolli offered a route into ownership through an ordinary purchase. Merchants paid Lolli when users shopped with them; Lolli sent part of that revenue to users as bitcoin rewards. Someone could carry on buying the things they intended to buy and acquire a small bitcoin balance along the way.

When Adelman explained the model on television in 2020, he described Lolli as many customers’ first bitcoin wallet and first experience of cryptocurrency. The merchant had an equally approachable introduction. A rewards partnership gave a retailer a way to participate without rebuilding its checkout around a new currency.

That arrangement fits a particular view of adoption. People have shopping habits already. Asking them to attach a reward to one of those habits is a smaller request than asking them to adopt an entirely new financial routine. The cleverness lives behind the purchase; the customer can remain concerned with the purchase itself.

The CEO was also on meme duty

Adelman brought an internet sensibility to a subject capable of becoming very solemn very quickly. In a 2019 conversation, asked who was responsible for Lolli’s memes, he answered, “I am.” The executive responsible for retail relationships was also attending to the jokes.

His explanation was brief: “Marketing, memes - same thing.” It helps explain the company’s social character. A product about accumulating tiny fractions of bitcoin needs a language people will enjoy repeating. “Stacking sats” gave the activity a shared expression, with a little more life than the average loyalty-program balance notification.

He credited bitcoin commentator Matt Odell with helping popularize that language around Lolli. The detail matters because Adelman’s public persona includes participation in a community’s culture, alongside the business of selling to large organizations. He could discuss merchant incentives and acknowledge the pleasures of a well-timed meme without changing the subject very much.

“Marketing, memes - same thing.”

Alex Adelman, 2019

The economist who kept asking questions

Adelman’s interest in access predates the rewards app. He has described being influenced by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank’s work, particularly the possibilities of giving people technology that expands their economic options. He has also said he began building technology at 12 and doing it professionally at 16.

His recollection of studying economics is less reverent than the framed degree might suggest. “I question everything,” he said in 2022. He was interested in what monetary explanations left unresolved, including behavior and uncertainty. Bitcoin attracted him in 2013 because its rules could be inspected and shared across an internet-connected population.

The ambition that followed was broad, but his chosen product was specific. Start with a wallet balance earned from shopping. Give someone a reason to become curious. A founder’s worldview can occupy a very large canvas; a customer still needs a button that does something understandable.

Bitcoin joins the coffee run

Browser shopping was only one part of that routine. During 2022, Lolli expanded its Card Boosts program, allowing customers to link a debit or credit card and activate offers before buying in stores. The existing card remained the instrument of payment. Rewards followed the eligible purchase.

That year’s partnerships included Shake Shack and Chevron. Burgers and fuel brought bitcoin into the territory of repeat errands. A customer did not have to plan an expedition into financial technology to encounter it. Lunch would do.

There was still product work in the apparently simple experience: linking cards, activating offers and confirming that a purchase qualified. These details determine whether the promise survives contact with an actual afternoon. By 2024, Adelman was discussing personalization and gamification, while his team worked with merchants on campaigns, sales goals and the mechanics of card-linked offers.

A funding round with a purpose

He has also worked on the investor’s side of the table. In his public advisory profile, Adelman describes investments in more than 30 companies across areas including payments, consumer products and gaming. He offers founders advice on fundraising, hiring and acquisitions. Those subjects span much of his own working history, from finding an early retail partner to deciding what happens after a sale.

In December 2023, Lolli announced an $8 million Series B led by BITKRAFT Ventures. Participants included Ulta Beauty’s Prisma Ventures, while earlier backers included Seven Seven Six and Serena Ventures. Those names connected the business to gaming, retail and consumer technology as well as crypto.

The proposed uses of the money were revealing. Alongside more engaging consumer rewards, Lolli wanted to bring its technology to enterprise partners: banks, exchanges, payment companies and other businesses that could offer rewards under their own brands. A consumer app had become a demonstration of infrastructure other companies might want.

Adelman said the company had considered acquisition interest during 2023 and chosen to raise money and remain independent. He described a deliberate approach to how much capital it needed. Selling a company once had evidently left him with more decisions to make about selling the next one.

One company sold, another stepped forward

The decision changed in July 2025. Thesis* acquired Lolli, with plans to connect its shopping and gaming rewards to a wider bitcoin ecosystem, including Mezo. At the announcement, Lolli reported more than 600,000 U.S. users and over $20 million in bitcoin rewards distributed since launch.

The transaction also separated Mirado, an enterprise platform that had been operating quietly within the business. At the time, it was providing merchant-funded rewards for more than 85 million cardholders. Adelman took the founder and CEO role at the independent company.

Mirado brings offers into banks, fintech products and other financial apps. Its current website describes a network reaching more than 225 million cardholders. That is a measure of its distribution network, distinct from the number of people who used Lolli. The larger number belongs to a different kind of business.

The work remains recognizably his: connect merchants with customers, make the reward worth noticing, and place the machinery where a transaction already happens. From Cosmic’s shopping cart to Lolli’s bitcoin balance to Mirado’s enterprise offers, Adelman has kept returning to the same commercial moment. Someone is about to buy something. There ought to be something in it for them. He learned that much at the bank.