Bitcoin Forum

I am considering making bitcoin cards similar to what bitbills was doing. The main difference is that instead of a hologram, it would use a scratch off area coving a QR code. The scratch off area would be similar to what you see on a gift card, just instead of a strip it would be a square.

The graphic design and color scheme for denominations will be similar to printcoins.com bills.

To start with I am just going to do bulk purchases of 100 per denomination, with the production cost of $0.70 per card on top of the BTC value stored in the card. Payments will be in BTC.

Available denominations will be open (no value, but loadable via qr encoded public address), 0.5 BTC (half-bitcoin), 1 BTC, 5 BTC, 10 BTC, 20 BTC, 50 BTC, 100 BTC.

Let me know if you would be interested in pre-ordering, and the quantities and denominations. If you order 500 of any denomination, you can have custom artwork and branding added.

I have had the same idea a good while ago: they will be called Paytunia cards and here is the design of the cards.
Denominations and colors are the same as poker chips.
There is also an open card to store an arbitrary amount.
The website www.paytunia.com (http://www.paytunia.com) will allow online redemption of the cards. The service will be open this coming summer.

http://www.e-ducat.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/paytunia-card-10BTC-resize.png

Cute name.

Will you need to use your website, or does the card just contain the private key?

The website will just offer the possibility to buy the cards and to redeem them but experienced users could do it of course using pywallet or whatever tool they like because the card will contain the private key (just like the "Ron Paul" cheques ;o))

I look forward to seeing your card design as well and perhaps new cheques design..

I didn't get any takers, so I am assuming there isn't much demand.

I'd love to purchase some for cash or credit card. But with all the tools that have come out recently, I don't know that I need to put my bitcoins onto a card. (I understand some people buy Casascius coins with bitcoins, but you're getting some pretty nice tokens, or even silver/gold for the service.)

Yep, I see the same thing. I am starting to think that there is not much point in physical bitcoins. Today I have ceased selling them as I wasn't selling much. I plan on opening up the pdf generating software for others to use for printing.

Cards are just an easy way to give out bitcoins as gift, tip or as a discovery mechanism when they are given to someone completely new to bitcoin..

I have come to realize that physical bitcoins are really just a novelty.

Yep it is. It is a technology free way to give bitcoins to someone. In the end, I prefer to just have someone install bitcoin spinner on their phone and send a coin to them.

I disagree. I think there are a number of advantages to storing a private key physically and storing or exchanging that, provided a certain level of trust is present (or unnecessary.)

I just think that enough tools exist for people to do most of this on their own. Paper is a great medium, and slightly sturdier materials can be used at home as well. I just don't see that anything much tougher is needed, unless the selling point goes beyond just having the key in physical form.

Casascius found that attaching keys to durable tokens have enough of a market demand, probably for the "neat" factor as well as storage durability and aesthetic appeal (those gold-plated 100-btc bars are nice!) to make his products worth it.

You just have to find what little niche beyond "it's in physical form" would work for you.

If these are "charged" at the point of sale, I'ld like to see them with a USD denomination.  So when purchased, whatever the exchange rate at the time is what is loaded.  But that way the salesperson doesn't need to deterimine the exchange, a $5 card has $5 worth of bitcoins on it, whatever that amount happens to be.