Cryptocurrencies integrating them more strongly with the economy

[fiulpro]

Long gone are the days when Government literally tried to ban the cryptocurrencies and it seemed like we are going to hit the rock bottom.

But now , in 2020 we are seeing what seems like the race to dominate the debit card industry in terms of cryptocurrencies.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lukefitzpatrick/2020/08/10/a-race-to-dominate-crypto-debit-cards-has-begun/

With the announcement of first crypto debit card being launched till now , where we are evaluating the risks of having a Crypto card for all the transactions this is the future of the society that Government sooner or later has to accept *the fact that crypto market is going to take over the world*

73 views|Aug 10, 2020,08:47am EDT
A Race To Dominate Crypto Debit Cards Has Begun
Luke FitzpatrickContributor
Crypto & Blockchain
I cover blockchain trends and cryptocurrencies.
In this photo illustration a Visa credit card and Mastercard...
POLAND – 2020/01/03: In this photo illustration a

SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
Halfway through this year, the Wirecard scandal shocked the world. What was once a tech darling, soon became a subject of controversy within financial circles. Before the news came to light, it appeared Wirecard could emerge as a dominant player in the crypto debit card space, but now, as Wirecard’s preliminary insolvency proceedings take place, the race to dominate the crypto card market has begun.


The dark past of crypto debit cards

In June, Wirecard filed for insolvency admitting 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) absent from its accounts was non-existent. Former CEO Markus Braun was arrested and suspected of market manipulation. Wirecard was not the first, and it is unlikely to be the last to face regulatory scrutiny of its business practices in the crypto debit card space.

In 2018, WaveCrest, a worldwide digital payment solutions provider, was ordered by Visa V to close all Visa prepaid cards immediately they had issued. Visa’s demand led to the suspension of many customer’s prepaid cryptocurrency cards in Europe. Visa stated WaveCrest had not been following Visa’s membership regulations but did not offer specifics regarding non-compliance.


During the ICO craze of 2017, Central Tech promised the development of Centra Card, which allegedly could be used at Visa and Mastercard MA terminals to make payments tapping into the customer’s cryptocurrency holdings. The company employed celebrities such as boxer Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled to promote its ICO. Experiencing delays, Robert Farkas, co-founder of Centra Tech, pled guilty during this year for securities and wire fraud.

Enterprise lend credibility

In July 2020, Visa posted a blog titled, Advancing our approach to digital currency, in which the company described its vision for digital currency. With plans to partner with many blockchain companies, Visa intends to provide customers with a broad array of technologies:


Work with licensed and regulated digital currency platforms such as Coinbase and Fold.
Create a bridge between Visa’s network of 61 million global merchants and cryptocurrencies.
In an expansion of its current cryptocurrency program, Mastercard is making it easier for companies in the digital currency space to issue branded payment cards as seen recently in a deal with Wirex.

Allows digital currency companies to issue cards on Mastercard’s network.
Wirex became the first native cryptocurrency platform to gain principal membership.
PayPal PYPL has also entered the cryptocurrency market and partnered with Venmo. Soon, PayPal’s 265 million users will be able to buy bitcoin via the Venmo mobile payment app. According to Coindesk, PayPal could begin rolling out bitcoin payments within the next 3 months.

The cryptocurrency industry has also been making progress in the issuance of cards as well. For example, Binance announced recently that its payment card, Binance card, will be coming to Europe in the next year.


On the Europe front, Nike NKE has shown a developing interest in blockchain rewards. Last last year Nike patented CryptoKicks—tokenized shoes on the ethereum blockchain—and partnered with Plutus to offer cryptocurrency rewards on Nike product purchases.

Bitcoin leaving exchanges on record numbers

In the last 2 months, a record number of bitcoins was removed from exchanges. Some investors transferred to cold wallets, others to DeFi, as a means of funding peer-to-peer loans (P2Ps), and earn interest on crypto—much higher than bank interest. However, some exchanges are receiving an uptick in deposits. This could be due to a combination of:

Security concerns: Over the years, several well-known crypto exchanges have been hacked (Mt Gox, Bitfinex, Upbit, etc). This means that there is an inherent risk of storing bitcoins on exchanges—many investors opting to store their bitcoins on cold wallets.
Government intervention: The risk of governments initiating bans and confiscating bitcoins due to global economic uncertainty.
The rise of DeFi: In the first part of 2020, the value of locked-up DeFi protocols increased from $1 billion to $4 billion, and a new concept known as yield farming was primarily responsible.

_*_

There already have been some negative reviews but with the Europe Users getting their first card is it worth the investment ?

Would it be able to stay for the long haul in the economy?

What we are seeing right now is the integration of the cryptocurrencies in the mere essential like *debit cards*, do you think we will be able to make a statement with this step? Or is the negative past of the company going to stop the users from taking a step forward. ?

_*_

I do think it a leap that we see , sooner or later crypto market might normalize and be used everywhere.

[Botnake]

Nice article, it's very positive and it could inspired crypto investors and users.

I do think it a leap that we see , sooner or later crypto market might normalize and be used everywhere.

That's everyone's dream, we are hoping for a massive adoption and it should result to the scenario posted above.
When bitcoin is widely use as an currency for online payment, the market will become stable as holders will not anymore panic since it's expected that the movement is going uptrend due to the increase of demand and use in different financial platforms and the like.

I know it will not happen instantly, but as long as regulation came in, big corporation especially in the financial industry will surely be ready to adopt.

[c_atlas]

To spend bitcoin with a card, you have to entrust the company that issues the card with your keys.

Like all things, there are certain tradeoffs to be made here. One of the benefits is that it makes bitcoin a lot more liquid, you'll be able to spend it more easily and the receiving merchant doesn't need to take on the risk of owning bitcoin (that is, if the company that issues the card converts your crypto to fiat and uses traditional payment networks).

The downside is that the issuer has complete control over where you can send your funds, which eliminates one of bitcoin's fundamental strengths over traditional payment networks. Blocking transactions isn't just something that could theoretically happen, PayPal has done this before.

Maybe you could make a case for why these systems should co-exist. You can use the card for simple purchases like groceries, coffee, dining, etc - then use the bitcoin network for online payments, donations, and so on. That being said, it would be better imo if bitcoin reaches a point where the liquidity and price stability mature enough (along with the scaling of the payment network itself) to overtake traditional payment networks.

[Darker45]

To be honest, I sometimes don't understand why a lot of cryptocurrencies mint their own coins, create their own wallets, issue their own cards, and so on only to end up looking for fiat payment systems for partnerships which then accommodates them but do not really make use of their coins because every time a user spends them they are automatically converted to fiat. 

On the other hand, Bitcoin is a currency and a payment system at the same time which eliminates third parties. These cryptocurrencies, on the contrary, are not only acting as third parties they also invite fourth parties.   

[avikz]

There already have been some negative reviews but with the Europe Users getting their first card is it worth the investment ?

Would it be able to stay for the long haul in the economy?

What we are seeing right now is the integration of the cryptocurrencies in the mere essential like *debit cards*, do you think we will be able to make a statement with this step? Or is the negative past of the company going to stop the users from taking a step forward. ?

Crypto debit card is the way forward if we want to see cryptocurrencies integrating with the mainstream economy. That's definitely going to stay for a long long time because of the convenience it provides to the user. A majority of the crypto users are unable to use cryptocurrencies directly due to the fees and the confirmation time it takes for a payment (especially for bitcoin). Crypto debit card essentially eliminates such bottlenecks from the entire process. So it's definitely going to stay.

I know the black history behind the initial debit card offerings but that's the initial hiccups. An industry can't sustain like that and now we already have 2 similar services running without any issue - polis pay and bitpay. I don't think past history of card issuers will have any impact in long run!

[enhu]

Nice article, it's very positive and it could inspired crypto investors and users.

I do think it a leap that we see , sooner or later crypto market might normalize and be used everywhere.

That's everyone's dream, we are hoping for a massive adoption and it should result to the scenario posted above.
When bitcoin is widely use as an currency for online payment, the market will become stable as holders will not anymore panic since it's expected that the movement is going uptrend due to the increase of demand and use in different financial platforms and the like.

I know it will not happen instantly, but as long as regulation came in, big corporation especially in the financial industry will surely be ready to adopt.

It seem like Wirecard, Crypto.com and WaveCrest had helped companies sees the opporunity in this market. It would then be time for the tokens they created. BNB for instance seem to have gotten involve in releasing debit cards. MCO is already up there which is quite ahead. They have been around since 2017.

Lots of information in this article, I now learn about CryptoKicks.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

OP, thanks for posting the link to this article--I definitely would have missed this story had you not started this thread.  I found this quote interesting:

PayPal PYPL -0.7% has also entered the cryptocurrency market and partnered with Venmo. Soon, PayPal’s 265 million users will be able to buy bitcoin via the Venmo mobile payment app. According to Coindesk, PayPal could begin rolling out bitcoin payments within the next 3 months.

I've never used Venmo, and I'll have to look into it.  And honestly I thought PayPal was going to remain unfriendly to cryptocurrency in perpetuity, but I guess I was wrong. 

The other interesting tidbits were the history of Wavecrest and Wirecard, neither of which I'd ever heard of.  Having a bitcoin debit card never interested me all that much, but after reading this article I might reconsider it.  Maybe.  I'm still not a big fan of spending bitcoin when I can use fiat instead.  But regardless of what I do personally, I think this is all good stuff for bitcoin as a whole.

[stompix]

To spend bitcoin with a card, you have to entrust the company that issues the card with your keys.
The downside is that the issuer has complete control over where you can send your funds, which eliminates one of bitcoin's fundamental strengths over traditional payment networks.

As a once is while bitcoin card user I would say there are quite a few disadvantages:
- fees, you pay monthly fees, exchange fees, hidden fees because the exchange rate is a bit "adjusted" then you pay some fx fees
- KYC, in most cases you're entrusting a foreign company with your information and you don't have any have guarantee it's not sold to others
- the one you mentioned, you're losing control over your money, if they decide something is not right they block your account and good luck dealing with it, it's not like your bank where you can go to a local branch and deal with a real person. You're stuck with answering robots and emails.

But there are advantages, mainly the fact that you avoid a combination of exchange plus bank transfer plus loading another card in order to spend your coins, and you can choose at any time how much you want to exchange.

I'm not that enthusiastic about some of those integrations, the rules are getting more than annoying and it will only get worse.

The moment I first got and inquiry about the source of the coins I deposited I could see what's coming, soon enough we will start looking back at banks and think how easy it was to deal with them compared to the new services and their ton of questions and verifications. The exchange I mainly use has asked me in the last 3 years 3 times for a copy of my id card and once for a selfie, after the initial sign-up, my banks haven't asked for one document in the last 7 or 8 since I've been their client. This ain't the outcome I want to see for cryptos, I understand some rules and regulations must be set in place but what we're experiencing is a rise in abuses.

[thesmallgod]

Crypto debit card work with centralized system. All your keys are being controlled by them meaning they take the blame if anything happens. This is not only applies to crypto debit card alone. It also happen with the card issuing by traditional banks. Much more reason why getting a license with card company like MasterCard is a rigorous process because they want to make sure users data are protected and there is adequate provision in case of fraud

[Kelvinid]

It was clear to know that we have a brighter future that cryptocurrency will mean to be of its purpose and being considered as currency. Some big companies won't neglect that to possibly happen as it nearly to come where people are mostly engaged in a cashless payment system. With the support of these known and big companies, it is likely they are making a way to help people to get to know more about crypto and helping them to decide about adopting it.

We should have to be open in this kind of development, we are not making the currency system to get at worse but we are helping it be more simplified and comfortable to all crypto users.

[hatshepsut93]

Long gone are the days when Government literally tried to ban the cryptocurrencies and it seemed like we are going to hit the rock bottom.

They didn't try to ban it - some did ban, others didn't. A few kinda banned and then kinda unbanned it. The fact that most countries didn't ban it just means that most countries are democratic and won't try to control every single aspect of their citizen's lives.

I do think it a leap that we see , sooner or later crypto market might normalize and be used everywhere.

If a person wants to use a card, why would they pick a Bitcoin card over a bank card? If they are interested in investments, they aren't going to spend it. If they only want payments, Bitcoin's volatility will be a problem and the cumulative effect of all the hidden fees will make it not worth it.

[c_atlas]

I'm not that enthusiastic about some of those integrations, the rules are getting more than annoying and it will only get worse.

The moment I first got and inquiry about the source of the coins I deposited I could see what's coming, soon enough we will start looking back at banks and think how easy it was to deal with them compared to the new services and their ton of questions and verifications. The exchange I mainly use has asked me in the last 3 years 3 times for a copy of my id card and once for a selfie, after the initial sign-up, my banks haven't asked for one document in the last 7 or 8 since I've been their client. This ain't the outcome I want to see for cryptos, I understand some rules and regulations must be set in place but what we're experiencing is a rise in abuses.

This is something that worries me as well. I nearly signed up for a Wirex card a while back but I figured I'd rather let it play out a bit before signing up for yet another service. I've experienced the same thing as you in terms of repeated KYC requests, and for multiple exchanges too. Thankfully I was careful with who I gave my information to, as several of the exchanges I used to use have been hacked and shut down.

To think that crypto services abuse our privacy more than our banks do...

[akram143]

It was clear to know that we have a brighter future that cryptocurrency will mean to be of its purpose and being considered as currency. Some big companies won't neglect that to possibly happen as it nearly to come where people are mostly engaged in a cashless payment system. With the support of these known and big companies, it is likely they are making a way to help people to get to know more about crypto and helping them to decide about adopting it.

We should have to be open in this kind of development, we are not making the currency system to get at worse but we are helping it be more simplified and comfortable to all crypto users.

Cryptos may have a bright future but not sure as a currency because people uses bitcoin for investment so they really don't need the companies to spend it but when people stated to consider it as currency then it will be helpful to make the payments more easier.

[CaVO32]

Long gone are the days when Government literally tried to ban the cryptocurrencies and it seemed like we are going to hit the rock bottom.

They didn't try to ban it - some did ban, others didn't. A few kinda banned and then kinda unbanned it. The fact that most countries didn't ban it just means that most countries are democratic and won't try to control every single aspect of their citizen's lives.

I do think it a leap that we see , sooner or later crypto market might normalize and be used everywhere.

If a person wants to use a card, why would they pick a Bitcoin card over a bank card? If they are interested in investments, they aren't going to spend it. If they only want payments, Bitcoin's volatility will be a problem and the cumulative effect of all the hidden fees will make it not worth it.

Maybe right now, users are not treating bitcoin as a means of payment method but rather an investment. But if more and more merchants will add bitcoin or crypto as their payment method, these crypto users will use their service at one point. Because if it is not available, how can they use crypto as payment method. Volatility is always there but if the service is readily available, people will be tempted to use especially these days that people are looking for other payment method aside from their fiat payment.

[davis196]

I'm not a supporter of Crypto debit cards.We don't need this.This is just another step that will eventually turn the crypto industry into a bank system,but with cryptocurrencies instead of fiat.
What if all banks and credit/debit card/payment processor companies adopt crypto payments?
You think that would be great,because the crypto prices would hit the moon.Yes,but the banks and financial services will remain the same centralized entities that have almost complete control over our money/coins.
I support mass crypto adoption,as long as the global financial system become decentralized and the people have full control over their money.If the financial system remains centralized,crypto adoption would be more or less pointless.