Best Bitcoin Reward Cards
By: Christian Hubbs
Tags: Saving, Cryptocurrency Investment, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Money

Best Bitcoin Reward Cards

Those airline miles you’ve been saving up on your credit cards didn’t pan out so well in 2020 with governments around the world restricting visas, closing airports, and outright banning travel. Rather than continuing to swipe and collect rewards that may never be redeemed, it might be time to look at some of the newest credit card offerings on the market: Bitcoin rewards cards.

There are currently three major cards on the market — or about to come on the market — offered by BlockFi, Fold, and Gemini. Each promises Bitcoin rewards, along with a variety of other services provided by their platform.

BlockFi

BlockFi Visa card

BlockFi offers crypto lending, so if you need some cash but don’t want to sell your crypto, you can get a loan against the crypto in your account. Additionally, they offer some serious interest payments (6% for BTC) for storing your crypto on their platform. Their Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card is designed to complement their offerings to help you earn BTC with every purchase.

The card will be released this spring and promises 1.5% back in BTC with each purchase to be deposited directly into your interest bearing crypto account. They want you spending early, so you get a $250 bonus if you spend >$3,000 in the first three months, and 3.5% in rewards during months 4–6 (max of $100 in rewards). If you hold stable coins (GUSD, PAX, or USDC), you’ll get an additional 2% APY on those balances up to $200, paid out in BTC. They offer a 0.25% trading bonus for trading on their platform with a $500 monthly maximum. Finally, you get $30 for each friend you refer as a cardholder.

All of this comes with a hefty annual membership of $200. If you’re going to put more than $3,000 on your card in the first three months, then you’ve got that covered with the sign-up reward. Additionally, you can cover that cost via the interest bearing account simply by maintaining a BTC balance greater than $3,333 at the current 6% interest rate.

Fold

Fold Premium Bitcoin Rewards Debit Card

Fold currently offers a BTC rewards debit card as well as a BTC rewards program based on spinning a daily rewards wheel and purchasing gift cards through participating retailers like Lowe’s, Amazon, and Doordash. This provides some nice ways to stack rewards (and Sats) by purchasing gift cards with other, high-rewards credit cards to get your normal rewards and BTC in the process. You don’t have to have the rewards card to participate in the gift card or wheel spinning system.

There are two tiers to the Fold rewards card system, Intro and Premium. Both are Visa debit cards — they work everywhere the BlockFi card does — but require loading a balance onto the cards before making purchases.

Both cards provide perks like access to the spin wheel after each purchase, yield on the rewards you keep with Fold, and additional gift card rewards. The primary difference between the two comes in the rate of rewards and the annual fees with the Premium card running at $150 per year, while the Intro card is free.

This additional $150 per year gives you access to the premium spinning wheel after each purchase — which averages a 3% payout instead of 1% — up to $500 per month in rewards on Amazon gift cards vs. $250 per month, a $50 Bitcoin deposit bonus, and 10% annual yield on your rewards vs. 2%. To get a lot of these, it’s important to read the fine print to understand how these limits come into play and get paid out. For example, the reward yield will pay 10% on all of your rewards that you leave on the card for 12 months, and gets paid out within 30 days after renewing your membership. So if you manage to rack up 0.02 BTC in your first year and leave all of those rewards with Fold, you’ll receive 0.002 BTC at the Premium level and 0.0004 BTC at the Intro level.

Gemini

Winkelvoss-backed Gemini is the most recent company to offer a rewards card having made the announcement in January 2021. Gemini provides users with a crypto exchange, and like BlockFi, pays out interest for holding crypto on their platform (they have, by and large, lower rates, but more options). Gemini also produces and backs the USD stable coin GUSD to provide easy transition between fiat and crypto.

The rewards card was announced shortly after Gemini acquired a fintech startup that had been working on their own Bitcoin rewards card, Blockrize. There isn’t much data as of yet regarding the reward structure, but Gemini promises to release it in 2021 and give up to 3% in Bitcoin rewards back for purchases made with their card. Additionally, they promise no exchange fees for withdrawing rewards. Beyond that, they have kept things pretty quiet so far, but that is expected to change in the coming months, particularly as their competition begins rolling out their offerings.

How do they Compare?

At this point, the primary comparison is going to be between Fold and BlockFi’s offerings. When Gemini provides more information, we can return and update this to include their card.

First off, note that BlockFi offers a credit card and Fold offers a debit card. In BlockFi’s case, you’ll get a monthly statement that must be paid off or it will incur interest and penalties, while Fold has you deposit cash on their cards before you pay. This also means that BlockFi’s card may be limited due to credit restrictions to qualifying applicants and it will likely impact your credit score. We’ll summarize the perks for both:

BlockFi

$200 annual fee

1.5% rewards

$250 bonus if you spend >$3000 in the first 3 months

3.5% rewards on purchases in months 4–6

2% stable coin bonus (max $200)

0.25% trading bonus (max $500)

$30 for each friend referral

Fold

There are two tiers, so Premium will be listed with the Intro rates in parentheses.

$150 annual fee ($0)

10% return on rewards kept with Fold (2%)

3% average rewards per spin after each purchase (1%)

5% back on Amazon gift card purchases up to $500 per month ($250 per month)

$50 deposit bonus for depositing $500 or more per month ($0)

$0 activation fee ($21)

If we assume you qualify for both, however, which do you choose?

Rewards Model

I put together a brief model of the payouts to visualize how the cards stack up based on average monthly expenditures.

BlockFi’s card has a few more variables based on when you make purchases (there’s a bonus for the first three months and rewards are higher in months 4–6), your stable coin balance on their platform, monthly trading volume, and the number of referrals. Fold’s model is based more on monthly expenditures with some extra rewards for Amazon.

To model this, I assumed an average monthly spend which was identical for each month of the year and no referrals or trades. For the BlockFi card, we had two stable coin balances, $10k and $5k maintained and I only included the 2% bonus on top of the current interest rate that you get with the card. Also, for both Fold cards, I assumed you maxed out your Amazon credits, which accrue at a higher rate, before you spent money elsewhere. Annual fees are applied twice for both cards because renewal is needed to get interest on your rewards for Fold and for the stable coin bonus for BlockFi’s card.

The results are plotted below.

For lower monthly spend (<$1,000) the Fold Intro card is the clear winner due to the lack of fees associated with it. If you don’t have a lot of cash going out each month, that’s where you should be.

BlockFi does well from $1k onward because of that $250 expenditure bonus, but you really have to be at or above that level each month to break even due to the high annual fees. However, even the higher interest on your stable coin balance (which maxes out at $200 annually) from BlockFi can’t keep up with the 3% average rewards and 10% annual bonus on your Bitcoin rewards garnered by Fold Premium’s offering beyond the $1,500 level.

Which is right for you?

If you have a lot of friends you can get to sign up for BlockFi, or do a lot of trading, then their card can close the gap on Fold’s Premium product. Additionally, I prefer a credit card vs a debit card because I never have to worry about my balance or reloading it, so there are some extra mechanics involved with Fold. However, if you’re a big spender, it could definitely be worth the additional steps.

If you’re interested in any of these, you can sign up below and join the wait-list for these products! Additionally, each of the links are referral links which get you some Bitcoin rewards for holding $500 in your BlockFi account for 30 days, making $100 worth of trades on Gemini, or just signing up for Fold’s app!