I am like a broken record player; always repeating the same thought or idea. Recently that thought of mine is that I need to increase my crypto passive income as much as possible. There are a multitude of reasons for this. The original reason was that I would like for this passive income to increase to an amount where it would be feasible to actually retire and live off of this income stream. But more recently there is a whole new reason. I had always expected this bull run to be crazy in terms of volatility and the price increasing. But it has moved up much faster than even I expected. This has made it much more difficult to accumulate a large amount of bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrency by spot buying. This has led me to look into other avenues to still accumulate as much as possible. Some of these things have been starting up Ethereum mining, and also using a small portion of my bitcoin to take out a loan and buy more bitcoin while the price was cheaper. All the while continuing to lend out to services like BlockFi.
But I still am not satisfied with my current accumulation rate and always on the lookout for more ways to increase my earnings. Something that has been on my horizon for quite a while is the BlockFi Bitcoin rewards credit card. I am a huge fan of using BlockFi, and so naturally I was very interested when they announced this card.
Now something to remember is that while there are a lot of Bitcoin rewards debit cards out there, there are no credit cards out there and this will be the first.
The simple idea behind it is that it is almost like every other credit card there, except for the fact that instead of receiving cash back rewards; you will be receiving bitcoin rewards back. Your rewards will be automatically deposited into your BlockFi account where you will also gain interest on those rewards. What could be better than receiving bitcoin on purchases that you would be making regardless. and then also earning interest on that as well? If you hold onto your BTC rewards long enough, it could eventually grow to be larger than the purchase you earned it with.
BlockFi's slogan for this credit card is simple, "Spend credit, earn bitcoin." They stress that this is indeed a credit card and not a debit card. You will be earning 1.5% cash back on all purchases paid in BTC. While this isn't the largest percentage reward out there, it isn't bad as well. And of course you can earn interest on you bitcoin rewards as well. Currently BlockFi offers an interest rate of 6% on bitcoin if you hold less than 2.5 BTC in your account. While this rate is subject to change in the future, it is very good.
And another big draw for this card is that it is a visa credit card. This means that you will be able to use it anywhere visa is accepted. Back home in the USA, or even international purchases when you travel.
It all seems too good to be true, but there is one caveat to the card that you need to be aware of.
The Negative
This card does have an annual fee of $200. Meaning that there is a yearly charge of $200 just to use the card. In my opinion that is a very high annual fee. If you were to do the math, on an average year you would have to spend about $13,333 to earn enough BTC rewards on your card to be even, let alone have any profits. Of course, during the year the price of BTC could grow significantly, which would make your rewards much higher as well. But there is also a risk that the price could drop, making it much harder to turn a profit on the card. For a person with a high salary perhaps spending the $13,000 isn't much of a task for them. Especially if you are able to use this to pay for all of your expenses; such as rent.
But for the average person, that is probably more than they would use the card for, and then it would end up being a losing proposal for the normal person.
But oddly enough, it appears BlockFi is aware of the backlash from the very high annual fee for the card and are trying to offer other rewards to offset this yearly cost.
Some of these extra rewards are:
$250 as a signup bonus if you spend $3,000 within your first three months
3.5% bitcoin rewards on all purchases in months 4-6 of card ownership, up to $100 in bitcoin
2% extra APY on your average daily Stablecoin balance, paid in bitcoin, up to $200
0.25% back in bitcoin on all eligible trades, up to a maximum of $500 in bitcoin each month
$30 in bitcoin for every client referral, on top of the base Refer-a-Friend program.
All of these things are very nice, but nothing really jumps out at me making me want to sign up. The initial sign-up bonus of $250 if you spend $3,000 within your first three months is great and would essentially erase your first year's fees. But unless there is a large purchase that you're planning to make, or can't use the card to pay your rent; then I would never recommend adding that kind of debt just to receive the "free" reward. My favorite of the bunch is the 3.5% reward rate during months 4-6 of the card. If the card had this as the permanent rate, I would no problem recommending this card. Even if it was 2%-2.5% rewards back, it would be much better than the normal rate offered. Also I'm never a fan of cards offering rewards for referring rewards, as it is a lot of work to accomplish that, and I don't like trying to convince my friends to sign up for a credit card.
Initially this card will only be offered in the USA, but BlockFi has stated that they plan to rollout to other territories very quickly. And like I mentioned up above, the card can be used anywhere that Visa is accepted. Even if you are outside the USA, BlockFi has recommended to sign up for the waitlist. And there does seem to be a lot of demand for this card. The last time that I checked, the wait list was well over 115,000 people.
If you're interested, you can join the waitlist here for the credit card.
PRO's
Credit Card with Bitcoin Rewards. The first of its kind
Nice initial bonus of $250 in BTC if you spend $3,000 within the first 3 months
A variety of other small incentives that add up to make the card more enticing
Visa branded that can be used anywhere, even internationally
CON's
Annual fee of $200
Mediocre Reward's back percentage of 1.5%
Initial launch only within the USA
Overall, I must admit I still haven't decided if I will be using the card or not. It's very exciting to have the option of receiving rewards back in bitcoin, and I do love BlockFi as a whole. In the future I am sure they will add other incentives or rewards to make using the card a no-brainer. But that annual fee is a lot to ask, especially when the reward percentage isn't anything too crazy. With that said, I have signed up for the waitlist and currently rank about 2,000 out of 115,000. Once I receive the card I will then decide to activate it or not. Although I have already begun imagining how I would use the card for everything. No longer using cash; and if you could use it to pay rent, or car payments it could really begin to become a little more attractive.
But how about you!? What do you think of the BlockFi credit card?! Is the allure of receiving BTC rewards enough for you to sign up? Or what do you dislike about it!?
As always, thank you for reading!
I think hit the nail on the head with the remark about how much you spend. If you spend a ton, it might be worth it. You're paying for the brainlessness of just having it all happen without lifting a finger. It's certainly not maximizing the earnings, though, and you'd likely earn more by finding a good cashback card and using its rewards to buy BTC.