Lolli put bitcoin in the shopping bag

Before Lolli had a bitcoin balance, it had a lollipop. As a boy, Alex Adelman disliked trips to the bank with his father. The sweet at the end made the errand worthwhile. Years later, when he and Matt Senter built a way to give shoppers bitcoin, the name was waiting. Banking had supplied the unpleasant chore and the tiny pleasure that softened it. Lolli would try a similar trick with a currency many people found baffling.

The lollipop came first

Adelman and Senter launched Lolli in August 2018. Their previous company, Cosmic, had built shopping technology before passing through PopSugar and Ebates. They understood the cashback bargain: a retailer pays to acquire a sale, and the service bringing that sale shares some of the payment with the customer. Bitcoin gave them a different reward to put inside a familiar wrapper.

The first product was a browser extension. It launched with more than 500 retail partners, according to Adelman’s launch essay. A shopper could buy ordinary things and receive a small bitcoin reward. Getting started no longer required choosing a moment to invest. It required remembering to activate a shopping benefit. That is a much smaller decision.

This was a business built by people who liked using what they made. In a 2020 staff interview, Senter said, “I’ve always liked building things I would use, and I use Lolli a lot!” The team’s public banter mixed engineering, customer service and bitcoin jokes. Behind the purple branding was a concrete ambition: introduce people to the asset through something they already did.

The retailer pays for the introduction

The original money flow was straightforward. A merchant paid Lolli a commission for a referred purchase. Lolli retained part and shared part with the shopper as bitcoin. The shopper was the user; the merchant was paying for attributable sales. The company’s expertise sat at that junction: retail relationships, purchase tracking and software that turned a marketing payment into a consumer reward.

That arrangement put Lolli between established cashback services such as Rakuten and bitcoin payment products such as Fold. Its attraction was the chance to accumulate bitcoin alongside shopping. Fold’s offering extends into cards and other payment activities. Ordinary cashback remains a sensible alternative for someone who wants a predictable dollar benefit. Lolli has to earn the extra attention its currency demands.

For retailers, the appeal was equally ordinary. They could reward a customer without making bitcoin the currency at checkout. The conversion happened in the rewards layer. That distinction let Lolli sell a new consumer experience using the machinery of affiliate marketing. It also made attribution essential: the business depends on knowing which purchases qualify and which partner should pay for them. A cheerful reward notification rests on some rather fussy accounting.

The product expanded to mobile shopping, daily reward interactions, games and card-linked offers. Money followed: a $2.25 million seed in 2018, $3 million in 2020, $5 million before the Series A, then $10 million in July 2021. BITKRAFT led an $8 million Series B in December 2023. Those announced rounds total $28.25 million, funding both consumer rewards and an enterprise push.

By the July 2025 acquisition announcement, Lolli reported more than 600,000 U.S. users and over $20 million in cumulative bitcoin rewards. These were company figures, not a count of currently active shoppers. The enterprise operation, Mirado, was being spun out separately. Consumer habit-building and white-label rewards infrastructure would now travel in different companies.

The exit became the problem

Thesis*, the bitcoin venture studio led by Matt Luongo, acquired Lolli in July 2025. The purchase price was undisclosed. Its plan connected earning with a wider financial ecosystem, including Mezo. But an ambition about what customers might eventually do with bitcoin encountered a more immediate concern: taking it out.

Thesis announced a withdrawal pause for a migration expected to last up to 90 days, with July 4 as the submission deadline. Luongo pointed to product data and support tickets requesting faster access. The published acquisition FAQ also described challenges in the previous model and a shift in shopping infrastructure. The new owner was rebuilding plumbing while customers still had balances inside.

A rewards app makes two promises: you can earn it, and you can get it out.

The lesson of Lolli’s migration

By October, The Block reported complaints about withdrawal restrictions and the initial emphasis on Mezo. That same month, Lolli announced its acquisition of Slice, a browser extension rewarding passive internet activity. Slice brought experience with Lightning withdrawals. In December, Lolli announced Spark-powered Lightning support, adding a faster route for moving rewards. The sequence makes the operational priority plain: small rewards need practical exits.

Back to the grocery list

By September 2026, Lolli had introduced gift cards bought directly from a user’s balance. The launch included Kroger, Instacart, Xbox and Home Depot. Its standard offer was 1.5% back in bitcoin; a second card bought within a qualifying 24-hour window earned 3%. A balance could become groceries or a game, with another reward attached to the card purchase.

The terms matter. Spending the gift card does not earn another Lolli merchant reward. The launch is U.S. only, and refunds are available until redemption. September also brought qualifying Acorns and Cash App offers, widening the actions advertisers would reward. A headline bonus remains conditional on completing and verifying the required action.

Consider the difference between earning a reward and spending a balance. The first asks someone to keep a future benefit in mind. The second gives that benefit a destination they can picture. A supermarket gift card is comprehensible even to someone who has never considered a bitcoin wallet. In that sense, the newer marketplace returns to the original product instinct: make the next step recognizable enough that people will try it.

For shoppers, the useful approach is modest: check the offer, buy what was already planned, and understand redemption before accumulating a balance. Bitcoin’s dollar value can fall. Buying extra things to chase a rebate can erase the benefit. For builders, Lolli offers a useful idea to copy: attach an unfamiliar product to an existing habit, then make the reward easy to use. The lollipop works because you actually get to eat it.