The wider world · 79 / 86 · 2 min
Payments and crypto cards
A crypto card spends coins by selling them for dollars at a company, then paying the shop. There is a fee, a spread, and a firm that can freeze the card.
There is a fee, a spread, and a firm that can freeze the card. Spending is not the same as holding keys.
A worked case
A card is called free because there is no monthly charge. The spread is taken when the coin is sold to pay the shop. The card is frozen on a weekend. The coins were not spent. They were sold by a company that can stop.
The pipe
The shop is not paid in the coin. The card company sold the coin. Your reward points are marketing. The spread is the real price.
Freezes
The card is a normal card network plus a crypto firm. Either can stop it. A weekend freeze is a bad time to discover that.
Spending is not the same as holding keys. Read the fee schedule before you call it free.
The shop was paid in dollars. You were charged a spread.
A crypto card spends by selling your coins for dollars at a company, then paying the shop through a card network. The shop does not receive bitcoin. The reward points are marketing. The spread and the fee are the price, and they are easy to hide because there is no line that says spread. There is a rate that is worse than the chart you checked in the morning.
The company can freeze the card. So can the card network. A weekend freeze is a bad time to discover that the coins were not spent by you. They were sold by a firm that can stop. Celsius and the exchanges of 2022 are the large version of a freeze. A card is the small, ordinary version. Ordinary does not mean you can eat.
Read the fee schedule before you call it free because there is no monthly charge. Free of one fee is not free. And the coins you might have wanted to keep are gone at whatever rate they chose in the second they sold them.
Read it yourself
These links are the record. They are not a recommendation, and they are not instructions. A news story or a court paper can still be wrong about a detail. The check does not change because a famous name is in the story.
Apply the check
Open a question. The line is about this topic. It is not a verdict that anything is safe.
The card company, via the spread.
The card network and the crypto firm.
Either of them, by freezing the card.
Check yourself
Does the shop receive your crypto?
Usually no. A company sells it and pays the shop in ordinary money.
After this you can find the spread and the company that can freeze the card.