Introducing the Shift Card: Use Bitcoin where Visa is accepted

I cannot recommend Coinbase at all. I operate an adult comic book publisher and they shutdown our account without notice and gave no real reason for their action. All support tickets took 3 - 5 days to get a reply and it was always unhelpful.<p>For a company like ours the whole appeal of Bitcoin is the anonymity, so our readers don&#x27;t have to worry about buying lewd comics and having it show up on their statements. Coinbase tarnishes what Bitcoin stands for and they do not protect artists&#x2F;publishers.<p>Edit: For transparency here is my back and forth with their support (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;CHeAEPP" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;CHeAEPP</a>) and the link to one of our books on Amazon I shared (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1634420241&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;dp&#x2F;1634420241&#x2F;</a> [NSFW]). Ironically I&#x27;ve been waiting on a reply from them for 22 days and counting. They have about $5,000 in our disabled account along with all our customer&#x2F;order information that we can&#x27;t access.<p>Do not use Coinbase.

Just a reminder to Bitcoin newbies:<p>This card looks like an OK product (still open questions about how much coinbase is gaming the ask&#x2F;bid spread) but just realize that this card does NOT use Bitcoin, it uses &quot;Coinbase Bitcoin&quot;[1] which is Bitcoin for which the coinbase company is managing your private key: You only truly own Bitcoins if you own the private key for the account (users of MtGox learn this the hard way last year)<p>I do think Coinbase also offers a safer multisig account where you own an independent key and no one, including Coinbase, can withdraw money without your permission (was it called &quot;Coinbase Vault?&quot;) If you put the majority of your funds in that independent system (or just keep them off Coinbase entirely) and put money in peace-meal to load up your coinbase Visa card you will greatly reduce your exposure to third-party risks.<p>[1] Reading the documents, it actually uses &quot;Coinbase USD&quot; which is the same difference.

You can now use Bitcoin anywhere VISA is accepted, so long as coinbase doesn&#x27;t close your account, ignore you and close all the tickets you open. Even if you painstakingly collect and compile sensitive documents for them to review, which was a gigantic waste of my time, thanks!<p>I have for months encouraged everyone I know not to use coinbase and will continue to do so.

&quot;The default PIN is the last four digits of your registered mobile phone number. Please call Shift support at 800-897-0717 to reset your Shift Card pin.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s a terrible idea. This isn&#x27;t a library card. You&#x27;re PIN shouldn&#x27;t be known by anyone who knows your phone number.

I&#x27;ve always found it ironic how companies like Coinbase are indirectly contributing to their own destruction with every passing transaction that&#x27;s not purely based around Bitcoin. This is of course: assuming that Bitcoin gets as big as a lot of people think it will. If it does: their increased focus on centralization and traditional fintech services (which is completely incompatible with the philosophy behind Bitcoin) is like shorting the entire currency on a long position, and will eventually be unsustainable. But I guess if they&#x27;re right: all they&#x27;re doing is profiting from the hype. If we look at what Bitcoin actually is, companies like Coinbase couldn&#x27;t be further apart from what they&#x27;re actually selling (philosophy, economics, and technologically) so I consider them nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites.<p>I wonder what it&#x27;s like working for a company that&#x27;s so obviously full of shit? How would you reconcile the obvious contradictions in what you&#x27;re doing every day? I guess it would be kind of like working at the ministry of truth and then getting paid directly in lies.

So<p>* you lose the psuedo-anonymity of Bitcoin (the card has your name on it). * It&#x27;s a &quot;debit&quot; card, so it also has none of the protection of a normal credit card (eg: if someone steals my card or over-charges or whatever, my actual money is not touched). * It&#x27;s not even real Bitcoin, it requires a Coinbase account (where, from what I understand, they manage your private key, so really own your bitcoins)<p>What exactly is the target market for this? The people who have no credit cards, the bulk of their cash in bitcoin, and also don&#x27;t care about privacy?<p>I&#x27;m not into bitcoin, but even so, I am just not seeing the appeal.

I&#x27;m curious what the exchange rate looks like when purchasing stuff that&#x27;s not in USD. If the conversion is the same as that of Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;USD, then it would make this card super useful for people who travel a lot.<p>What I mean is, it&#x27;d be cool if the card would do:<p><pre><code> - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;CAD - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;EUR - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;BHT - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;HKD - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;AUD</code></pre> So that we wouldn&#x27;t need to do:<p><pre><code> - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;USD&lt;-&gt;CAD - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;USD&lt;-&gt;EUR - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;USD&lt;-&gt;BHT - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;USD&lt;-&gt;HKD - Bitcoin&lt;-&gt;USD&lt;-&gt;AUD</code></pre>

Seems like nobody understands how this can work, or why would they do that.<p>Easy. You swipe your card, Coinbase pays with $, then Coinbase tries to sell enough of the bitcoins you have there to make it even (there might be a fee).<p>So you need to have a bitcoin balance in Coinbase when you want to use this card.<p>Now why would you do this? If you&#x27;re asking yourself this question, there are high chances you are not the target of this product.<p>There are a lot of people who made a lot of money in bitcoins, and who hold a LOT of bitcoins. This is going to be an easy way for them to spend it on a normal day-to-day basis.

According to the Shift Payments FAQ you must reside in one of the following states to spend bitcoin via Coinbase: AL, AZ, CA, DE, DC, GA, ID, IA, KS, ME, MS, NE, NV, NJ, NC, ND, OK, PA, PR, SD, TX, VT, WA, WV<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shiftpayments.com&#x2F;faq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shiftpayments.com&#x2F;faq</a>

Don&#x27;t get the point of this. I&#x27;m assuming it&#x27;s going to be a slightly more expensive way of buying things with a card? As supposed to me being charged in $, I&#x27;m assuming it exchanges some of my BTC balance for $ which is going to come at some cost.

I can&#x27;t really find details on how this works. I assume the merchant still receives USD in the transaction along with the typical Visa card transaction fees. Which in that case, what is the point?

I couldn&#x27;t find any mention on the website -- does it support one time numbers for online transactions? If not, I&#x27;d be very reluctant to use it. One breach and your bitcoin account is gone.

I hope they&#x27;ll provide a convenient tax document covering the capital gains for all these transactions, given the IRS ruling that even small transactions have to be reported that way.

I used an early prototype of this card and the experience is awesome. Super simple, it just works. App is a nice companion when you want to see the transactions you&#x27;ve made. Congrats to the team on the launch!

Someone please change the title to Anywhere IN US :)

If I understand correctly it exchanges some btc to dollars in order to pay the merchant. But this relies on 0-conf transactions, right?

If you wanted to use a visa card, why would even bother with bitcoin?<p>Or vise-versa

&quot;The Shift Card is a VISA debit card that currently allows Coinbase users in twenty-four states and territories (see list below) in the U.S. to spend bitcoin anywhere VISA is accepted.&quot; - So you have to live in one of the 24 states. And for California they only allow up to 1000 applicants...

Oh wow I will sign up for one! I have been a Coinbase user since they started operating, and am currently in the middle of a year-long trip around the world so I have been looking for ways to minimize my international ATM withdrawal fees. My US bank (Wells Fargo) charge me a flat $5.00 fee per transaction, and my french bank (Crédit Agricole) charge me about $8.50 for the equivalent of a ~$220 withdrawal. I see that Shift has a flat fee of $3.50, so <i>yay</i> for beating old legacy banks! Though I am kind of sad to see that the Shift debit card has no chip. Cards with only a magnetic track are becoming increasingly difficult to use in countries other than the US.<p>Also, it&#x27;s worth noting that both Shift and Coinbase are YC companies.

Is it me, or does a requirement to provide your physical address (&quot;Connect your Coinbase account, Order the card by providing your physical address and authorizing the $10 issuance fee&quot;) kind of miss some of the point about BitCoin?

Maybe I&#x27;m being naive, but I felt like bitcoin was going to free us from credit card companies.<p>Wouldn&#x27;t it be nice if almost-monopolies weren&#x27;t able to raise prices on everything slightly in order to fund their rigged rewards programs?

The only times I tried to use Coinbase to buy Bitcoins, they stopped processing orders apparently because the Bitcoin value was fluctuating too much, so I never got my Bitcoins... and I never used them since then.

Not super related to Shift Card, but I always thought big banks are terrible at customer service and how they treat their customers. Looking at complaints about CoinBase and how ShiftCard is setting pin based on phone number, you get a sense that this is all a bunch of amateurs and&#x2F;or kids running the show.<p>Or maybe handling transactions is really hard?<p>Not sure what to think honestly.

Any idea why only 24 states? Is coinbase following FINCEN regulations by filing as a money transmitter in each eligible state?

I&#x27;ve never used Bitcoin, although was mentioned by its original inventor on a research list once ;).<p>I have met the founders at Coinbase, and their vibe was more like that of an SF startup that will do anything to &quot;win&quot; and &quot;exit big&quot; than a world change agent. Bitcoin needs the latter, not the former.

Where was that thread about making financial bets based on how many negative comments were in a HN thread?

Devil&#x27;s advocate: Ive had little to no problem with Coinbase for a good 80%+ of my bitcoin usage.<p>The only issue I had is my buy limit decreased suddenly because they added more security I had to verify for my identity and didn&#x27;t notify me. Once I verified my ID it was instantly reinstated.

Whenever I buy or sell bitcoins on Coinbase, I pay a lot both directly (via coinbase commission) and indirectly (via their super wide spreads).<p>If I get this card, am I going to still get screwed, or will it suddenly be cheaper to transact?

will be interesting to see if they can make this available internationally.

Pardon my lack of knowledge but wasn&#x27;t the whole point of bitcoins being anonymous? How are you anonymous with a card connected to an account?<p>I&#x27;m not trolling I really don&#x27;t see what I&#x27;m missing.

You don&#x27;t have bitcoin if you just have a balance in Coinbase, so this debit card really has no connection to Bitcoin at all. No transactions will reach the blockchain when you use this card.

Has anyone answered the basic question of why anyone would actually use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange when the value of Bitcoin, despite fluctuations, is <i>designed</i> to increase over time?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xapo.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xapo.com&#x2F;</a> offers prepaid card which works everywhere too and is not such corporate asshole like Coinbase.

Am I the only one who misread this as &#x27;Introducing the Shit card&#x27;? For a full two minutes, I thought this was a parody site mocking bitcoin.

I just ordered one.<p>Will report about usage, quirks and tricks.

I love it, use your bitcoin without all the hassle of making a transaction on the blockchain.

Though this isn&#x27;t PERFECT, it&#x27;s better than nothing. Just my opinion.

after seeing this thread I login to my coinable account since I have check it in few months. Shocked to find my BTC balance to 0 although I had a few. emailed support this morning and so far no response.

I guess someone will get some impressive mileage numbers.

You still need a bank account. Beats the purpose imo.

Anywhere visa is excepted, by which we mean ~half the U.S. because Americans have that much awareness of the rest of the world.

Will this support Apple Pay?

I can get the same &quot;privacy&quot; and not be subject to arbitrary Bitcoin&#x2F;Dollar price fluctuations by simply buying Visa debit &quot;gift cards&quot; for cash.

&quot; in twenty-four States &quot;

Taylor Shift <i>chuckles</i>

if anyone wants to sign up for coinbase here&#x27;s a referral link to start off with free $10 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coinbase.com&#x2F;join&#x2F;songz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coinbase.com&#x2F;join&#x2F;songz</a> :)