Good morning and welcome to another Thursday update! As you probably know, I have been full in on research and support of the whole crypto/blockchain boom. I wish I had gotten into it a few years ago. I hate seeing random articles or posts that are like here’s what $X would be worth today if you had invested 10 years ago. Or if you had invested the first stimulus check in Bitcoin it would be worth $10K today. Ugh...that just makes me sad.
Just to make you even angrier I’ll give another example. If you had invested $1,000 in Tesla 10 years ago, I think it’d be worth almost $150,000 today! Woa...but wait...there’s more! If you had invested $1,000 in Bitcoin 10 years ago...today it would be a little over $13.1 million!
But we shouldn’t get too angry. A wise person once said: “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
So that’s what Tay and I are doing. Planting some trees.
But isn’t crypto still kinda risky?
Yes and no. I think it’s actually kind of debatable at this point. People would argue it might be riskier to keep your assets in the constantly inflating US dollar than Bitcoin. But for now, we’re going with the philosophy that crypto is indeed risky. Which is why I’m writing this post.
Tay and I have found what we think is the “safest” possible investment strategy our two little minds could come up with. It probably won’t make us millionaires, but we also won’t lose all our money either and it satisfies the whole FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) thing.
The trick is: cashback.
That’s right. All of our investments (for the most part) are from cashback from our credit and debit cards. So month to month our budget stays the same. Crypto investments don’t make it in our budget at all. We simply use the free money credit/debit card companies give us and invest that instead. I figured I could just give a breakdown of all the cards and services we use. It might be helpful for someone out there. By the way, this isn’t financial advice at all. Please don’t think it is. I have just done a lot of research on these products and we have now used them and wanted to shed a light on what the real-life experience is like. So, let’s jump in!
Crypto.com
So the first card/service we use is from a company called Crypto.com. They are a business headquartered in Hong Kong, but all of their assets and corporation status is in Malta. Malta and Puerto Rico are two safe haven islands for starting crypto corporations. Why?
They have no capital gains taxes.
I only say that because when I first heard they were in Hong Kong, but all their banking stuff came from this random island I’d never heard of, I got a little sketched out. But there is a legit reason behind it.
They are also sponsors of Formula 1 racing and the UFC and some other cool things.
Anyways. Crypto.com aims to be an all-in-one service. They have a crypto exchange, earn feature, defi app, staking, wallets, NFTs, person-to-person payments, but most importantly to us, they have these cool debit cards. It’s a prepaid card so you just send money to the app and load up your card. Boom!
However, they have some cool cashback opportunities if you use their card! They have 5 different cards to choose from. Each level requires a certain initial investment in the crypto.com coin called CRO.
Essentially you have to do what’s called “staking” to gain access to the different levels.
Staking just means you buy let’s say $400 worth of CRO and it is locked in the app for 6 months, but in the meantime, you can get all these cool perks with their card. It’s not a $400 fee, it’s still your money, it’s just locked in CRO for 6 months. After 6 months, if you want to continue using the card, you do have to continue staking the $400 worth of CRO. Or you can cash out and call it a day. This can be a great thing if CRO goes up in value, though. Your $400 could be worth $800 in which case to keep using the card, you put up $400 and keep the other $400 as profit!
Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent. I just wanted to try and make the whole “staking” thing clear because it can be confusing. Back to the actual card.
They have a free card too where you get 1% back on any purchase all in CRO. The next level after that (the $400 staked one) gives 2% back on every purchase, plus a 100% rebate on Spotify! All paid out in CRO, which you can trade with little to no fees for whatever currency you want. I personally believe in CRO and keep it in that and continue staking for higher rewards in their defi app, but that’s out of this article’s scope.
Of course, if you’re a big roller and happen to have $400,000 lying around you could get their Obsidian card. Not only do your earn 10% growth on that initial 400K, but you get 8% back on all purchases, 100% rebates on Spotify, Netflix, and Prime, plus some other dope perks including airport lounge access and a private jet membership!
There are a ton of things you can do on crypto.com, but the last one I wanted to mention is their Pay feature. This allows you to send CRO as a payment to other people on the app. You can also spend your CRO on discounted gift cards to popular places. OR, my favorite one that Tay and I use is you can use CRO to pay for your phone bill! If you happen to have a prepaid plan as we do. Plus you get more cashback again on your CRO. Win-win!
BlockFi
Alright. The next card is an actual credit card. BlockFi is the first company to issue a credit card that gives you all cashback rewards in Bitcoin!
For the first 3 months, you get 3.5% back on all purchases in Bitcoin! The way it works is you accumulate “points” (like most cards) and then on the second Friday of every month, those points are turned into Bitcoin with no fees. After the 3 month entry, the reward is 1.5% back.
BlockFi has an interest account feature (like crypto.com) where you can leave your Bitcoin to grow at 4.5% a year. That’s pretty cool! There are certainly pros and cons to leaving Bitcoin in there long term. They are an exchange and so they are fully in charge of the security of your Bitcoin. There is a popular saying in the crypto world: “not your keys, not your crypto.” Basically, BlockFi has the keys to your wallet and they promise to keep it secure. But it’s not a binding promise. If they get hacked and lose your money, tough noodles. So the most secure way to keep Bitcoin is to transfer it to your own wallet and store it there. It all just depends on how much you want that 4.5% growth and how much you trust BlockFi.
Discover
So Discover doesn’t do anything special with cryptocurrencies. At least not yet. But I put it here because they have a cool cashback program.
They have a 5% cashback on all purchases within a specific theme. What do I mean?
Every quarter has a different theme. Like this quarter (October - December) the cashback theme is Amazon, Target, and Walmart purchases. Every purchase at any of those stores earns 5% cashback. It’s capped at $75 per quarter.
After that, it’s 1% back on every purchase.
So essentially, we use the cashback each month from Discover to send to an exchange and invest in crypto. That’s an easy way to do it.
Coinbase Debit Card
Coinbase is another popular crypto company and our goto exchange. They have an all-inclusive product portfolio like crypto.com. Coinbase is an American company and is doing some really cool things. The CEO is working very closely with the US government to try and navigate regulations in the crypto space so everyone comes out a winner and the government isn’t stuck making decisions on a sector they know nothing about.
Coinbase also just announced they have a debit card (kind of like crypto.com). They don’t quite have as many perks as the crypto.com cards, but they also don’t require any staking at all. They also let you spend crypto directly with the debit card, where crypto.com makes you convert it into your native currency (USD for me) and once it’s on the crypto.com card, you can’t take it out. That’s not the case with the Coinbase card. It’s more flexible.
Plus right out the door, there are several cryptocurrencies you can choose to get your cashback in. Coinbase doesn’t have a coin they run on like crypto.com’s CRO, so you can choose from several. There are currently two coins that give you 4% cashback, which is pretty cool!
You can also add this card to Apple Pay and Google Pay, which you can’t do with crypto.com.
Cashapp Card
The last one is the Cashapp card. For those that don’t know, Cashapp is superior to Venmo in every way imaginable.
I won’t rant too much, but I mean Venmo locked me out of my account for donating to a charity. Come on, guys.
Cashapp is similar to Venmo, though, for reference. They are owned by Square, which made all the credit card swiping technology you see at farmer’s markets and small businesses. The Cashapp is Square’s app like Venmo, but of course better and I’m pretty sure came first.
They also have a card so you can spend your money stored in the app at any store that accepts Visa! And of course, the card has certain cashback opportunities they call Boosts. The OG boost was $1 off any coffee shop, which I used fervently throughout college. Today, they have a plethora of different opportunities.
The most recent news on the Cashapp is you can now purchase Bitcoin on the app!
This means that they added some Bitcoin-related boosts to the card too! Now you can only use these once a week, but they have one that gets you 10% back from a coffee shop and also one that gets you 10% back at a restaurant! 10% back in Bitcoin is incredible! Again, it’s only once a week, but still! We’ve got like $6 worth of Bitcoin (after it grew) just from going to Moe’s once and Caribou once!
Conclusion
Whoo! Ok, I know that was a lot and it sounds really confusing. Again, none of this is financial advice, I’m just offering some real-world experience to anyone doing research on any of these opportunities. We like them all and it’s turned into a little game to figure out how to maximize our cashback opportunities. We aren’t all in like the people that somehow just drop $250K like it’s nothing, but we also are invested enough to not suffer from FOMO.
Finally, if you are interested in any of these cards, you can use my referral code and we both get free money! I mean, who doesn’t like free money!?
https://crypto.com/app/rffhcdsnmj
https://blockfi.com/?ref=595f170b
https://refer.discover.com/s/DAVID12320490