The people around me already know this, but for those that dont - I’m what you call an enthousiast when talking about crypto. No, not cryptography - cryptocurrency! As someone that values practice what you preach, I try to transact as much as possible with “cryptocards”. It’s quite doable, with exceptions like paying your taxes, loans or traffic tickets.

What is a cryptocard?

Well, there isn’t even a definitive answer. There are various cards, which work quite differently under the hood. Almost all cryptocards are either Visa Debit, or Mastercard Debit. Some actually sell your crypto in realtime to use the USD/EUR to buy the product you’re trying to pay for, whilst some don’t - but do make it a whole lot easier to manage your crypto holdings and make transactions with them.

Plutus card

plutuscard

In general, my go-to card is my Plutus card. This is because of the crypto rewards. I currently get 5% back of each transaction in a crypto token called Pluton (up to 2k of spend a month, but you can increase this to 20k spend a month). The normal rate is 3%, but I’ve staked around 500+ PLU in my own wallet - hence having this benefit. Using perks, you can also get back a much larger percentage for a selection of companies, like Uber, Takeaway, Lidl or Aldi. Once a month, I get 10 EUR back on e.g. a Takeway purchase. You can find an overview here. The funny thing is, this card doesn’t actually transact crypto in the background for your transactions. You put your USD/EUR money into the Plutus account, and spend it. That’s where my second card comes in.

Now I hear you thinking, what kind of ponzi is this - how is the cashback being financed? Won’t the price just go down, as more and more PLU tokens are being distributed? I mean, kuddos for you for asking the question - because most people don’t and think oh free money gimme. Neglecting the risks you’re taking.

Plutus generates revenue by charging a monthly subscription, as you saw in the overview I linked. The tokens economics itself, are best described here and here. The tl;dr is, if you want more cashback - you can buy PLU to stake and hold, this is the buy pressure (besides speculation). At the same time, PLU is being emitted based on the transaction volume and respective percentages of the user based on staking and subscription level. So it’s in direct corrolation with the use and success of Plutus. The buy pressure is there, as the CEO shared in June as well. You’ll see the price chart is, especially compared to most altcoins, not that influenced by the majors (BTC and ETH) - because of these economics.

Binance card

binancecard

Using my Binance card, I can buy whatever it is I want - but by selling my crypto in realtime. This is as close as you can currently come to paying with crypto these days. The best way would be to just send BTC to the merchant, but adoption is not there yet by a long mile. Good thing to know is, is that the crypto that Binance sells - is in custody of Binance. So I only store a relative small amount there, for security reasons. Now, you can also get cashbacks with the Binance card - but the cost is way higher compared to Plutus. I’d need 100 BNB vs 500 PLU - which translates into 27K EUR vs 3.9K EUR of staking at 08/06/22 prices. Perhaps in the future, but for now - I like Plutus more. The Plutus app is also more appealing for me. The UI is great, and does what it needs to.

Now the token economics here, are a bit more complicated. BNB has so much utilty across the board, it isn’t as trivial as Plutus. A good introduction, is this Binance article from 2020. They aren’t explicit in how they finance the rewards, but my guess is they do a buyback themselves of BNB tokens and use that to reward their customers. This would fit their token economics overall, in combination with the token burn they also participate in.

Curve card

curvecard

Curve isn’t a cryptocard. It’s a card to manage your cards (I have more than these two, lol). Curve allows you to program which Visa/Mastercard is used on a category basis for each transaction. It’s like a card orchestrator. You now also have two cards, for the same primary card.

Concluding

I mean, even if you don’t care for crypto - something like a Plutus card is a nobrainer. 3% cashback (so without any additional staking) on transactions in combination with the perks, it adds up over time. If you don’t want to keep the PLU/BNB rewards, you can sell them instantly as well for USD/EUR. But if you’re an pragmatic idealist like myself, it’s a statement against the current dominant banking systems. By using these cards, I finance the progression of crypto cards/startups and crypto in general - whilst disallowing traditional banks profiting on my capital and transaction data.

Be the change you want to see!

References