08/25/21 Update: I had previously thought the reward cap for Spin+ card was $500 per month but that apparently isn’t the case. The maximum you can buy with Spin+ card at a base of 5% BTC back is $500 per calendar month. This obviously introduces a huge limitation to the card as far as buying Amazon gift card is concerned.
Recently I wrote about various crypto debit cards that earn up to 8% cashback. Next, based on reader request I wrote a review on the Fold Card. Well, in this article I will once again talk about the Fold card, except this time around I plan to focus on the aspect of buying Amazon Gift Card.
join Fold App through the link below and get 5000 satoshi. If you signup for Fold Card before July 31st, you get $25 and so do I.
https://use.foldapp.com/r/TRAVELINPOINTS
First things first, I don’t think Fold card is the best day-to-day crypto card. I would say the best crypto card at the moment is the 4% Coinbase card. But admittingly Fold card is very difficult to judge because
- the reward varies from purchase to purchase. Every time you make a purchase, you spin the wheel to see the reward you get.
- the prize varies from wheel to wheel. Sure, one could run the numbers to figure out the optimal way of using Fold but the issue is they change the wheel all the time.
Anyway, if you have their Spin+ card, which has an annual fee of $150, you can get 5% back in Bitcoin (BTC) for purchasing Amazon gift cards. Sure, you can get 5% back on Amazon from few other cards but Fold card sines because you can possibly stack 5% with additional benefits you get from:
- Daily wheel
- Purchase wheel
You can read about them in much detail in my Fold review but long story short daily wheel is something you spin once a day while purchase wheel is something you spin at least once after every purchase. Notice I said “at least once” for the purchase wheel, this is because you can spin the purchase wheel again and again, until you run out of extra spins. You can get extra spins through various things like holding $1k+ balance on the card (read more on Fold card review).
It isn’t uncommon to get 1% cryptoback boost on the daily wheel. For example, in the current wheel the changes of getting 1% boost is 17.5014%. This means your chances of drawing 1% boost at least once a week is rather excellent. Now, if you make a $500 gift card purchase right after you are boosted, you are netting 6% back in BTC…so far.
After you make the purchase, you spin the purchase wheel and should you not land in a lucrative reward, you could use extra spins (tip: accumulate enough extra spins before making a purchase) to give you a good chance of landing something better. Some of the lucrative rewards include, additional 5% back in BTC, 10% back in BTC, 1.5% back in BTC, 2% back in BTC, up to $100 back in BTC, one whole BTC, etc.
For example, during the current spending wheel, it should not be hard to get 1% boost from daily wheel plus 5-10% back from spending wheel thus netting 11-17% back in BTC.
However, a few caveats are worth noting:
- Monthly reward on Amazon is capped to $500.
- Earned reward is available for withdrawal only after 30 days.
- Fold processes withdrawal on weekly basis.
- Crypto market is very unstable. This means, in 30 days period your reward could be worth 1/2 the amount they were at the time of purchase.
The good thing is that withdraw is free, however you need 50,000 sats to withdraw. Here is an example of of withdrawing around 63,000 sats from Fold (top) and receiving it in an exchange (bottom picture). Note: 1 sats = 0.00000001 BTC.
Closing Thoughts
Fold obviously also sells other gift cards and some of them provide higher return than 5% on BTC. However, I chose to focus this article around Amazon purchase because more or less everyone uses Amazon. Obviously it goes without saying that purchases made with gift card do not have the same (return, price, etc) protection as you might with a credit card.
Having said that, I would say I mostly wrote it for that crowd of reader who resells a lot on Amazon and are interested in investing (gambling?) in BTC for free minimal risk. Sure, 5% cashback from other cards is consistent but Fold allows you to passively accumulate BTC at varying rate (based on whatever the market cost of BTC is) so if you like BTC, this app might be worthwhile for you.
I think this card would be a lot more attractive to the general crowd if withdrawal period wasn’t so long. If the withdrawl period was few days, I could totally see people buying bunch of gift cards when BTC is at its relative lowest. Then these people would sell their reward when BTC increases in value by a few thousand.
Obligatory disclaimer: not a financial advice
2 comments
Does fold sell Best Buy GCs?
nope.