Skeptic's lens: The rise and fall of crypto debit cards

Crypto debit cards were one of the hottest consumer facing products in early 2017. The value proposition was simple: users wanted to spend their cryptocurrencies but merchants didn’t want to accept them. So these seemingly clever companies worked with debit card issuers and built a system that allowed users to deposit their cryptocurrencies, which were automatically liquidated whenever users swiped their debit card. Merchants would get the fiat currency they wanted and users could spend their cryptocurrencies without touching the dirty fiat. The crypto debit card companies handled the whole conversion mess in the background and charged a fee for every transaction.

Everyone wanted to be in the game. Coinbase partnered with Shift Payments. BitPay, Bitwala, Wirex and Coinsbank also had their own cards. TenX, a crypto debit card company based in Singapore, was so highly anticipated it raised an equivalent of $80 million in an ICO in seven minutes. Similarly Monaco, which has since rebranded to Crypto.com, raised nearly $27 million in an ICO. They differentiated themselves with smaller fees and better user experience. But there was a massive liability that very few have foreseen - there was only one company that was willing to issue these debit cards and that was WaveCrest.