07/1/2022 Update: Voyager has frozen withdrawal. See official blog post here. The writing was on the wall after they lowered withdrawal limit and Three Arrows failed to pay debt. See “crypto catastrophe warning” blogpost for how one crypto collapse is leading to another collapse.
06/11/2022 Update: It looks like debit card earns 1-3% depending on what reward tier you are on. Considering VGX token is trading at about 70 cents, 20k VGX is still too much for 3% debit card. Also, supposedly beta will end soon and everyone will have access to the card in about 10 days.
Voyager, a publicly traded (on Canadian Stock Exchange) crypto exchange, is set to release debit cards soon (expected Q1 2022). Here is my early thoughts and “review” based on what we know so far.
On the surface it seems like the card doesn’t earn any reward but if we look at Voyager’s announcement from Sep 1, 2021 (summarized with the image below) we can see that the card potentially earns up to 0.30% crypto cashback.
Signup to Voyager using this link and get $25 in BTC after you trade $100 (can be a stablecoin).
Based on the information provided in above image, you get:
- 0.10% cashback for holding 500 VGX (Adventurer tier)
- 0.20% cashback for holding 5,000 VGX (Explorer tier)
- 0.30% cashback for holding 20,000 VGX (Navigator tier)
Cashback is paid in Voyager’s native token, VGX. You can see its current price on CoinGeko or CoinMarketCap.
Interested in this debit card that doesn’t pay you anything? Join Wait List here.
Obviously, the loyalty program provides more than just cashback. For example, you get an added 0.5% to 1.5% interest boost, but you can similar interest rate boost from loyalty program of other exchanges like Crypto.com and CoinZoom except their card pay 1-8% and 1-5% crypto cashback respectively. If you don’t want to deal with loyalty program BS and still get high interest, then you may want to try platforms that lend/borrow crypto and provide free withdrawal. For example, Voyager payd 9% (+ up to 1.5% based on Loyalty tier) on USDC while Hodlnaut pays 12.7% APY on USDC. It is also worth mentioning that Voyager lends out to Celsius anyway and Celsius happens to have excellent signup bonus. The “benefit” of Voyager is that this is a publicly traded so it is possibly more trust worthy than some of the other players in the market.
Closing Remark
This card is trash. For beginners I still recommend the 4% “must have” debit card from Coinbase and maybe even the BTC earning debit card from Fold.
