How do you spend your crypto?
Assuming you don't want to just hodl all of your cryptocurrency investment indefinitely, the question of how to enjoy its value might cross your mind. Of course, enjoying its value involves actually using the cryptocurrency to purchase goods at some point.
Buying stuff with crypto is becoming more accessible. More companies accept Bitcoin, for example, like Overstock.com. You can buy Amazon gift cards, essentially converting your crypto back to fiat for purchasing goods. And you can buy games on Steam with Bitcoin - that gets mentioned a lot.
But it's still not quite as accessible as it needs to be.
Enter TenX. TenX is a debit card solution to this problem. Much like a VISA or Mastercard pre-paid card, you "charge" the TenX debit card with supported coins from your wallet. As of now, you can load your Bitcoin from your other digital wallets on to the TenX card wallet and then use the debit card just as you would your bank debit card. Support for Ethereum, ERC20 tokens, and Dash is in beta testing. With TenX, the hope is that you will be able to use much of your crypto portfolio with the ease of tapping a debit card.
That's the promise of TenX. A number of competitors are working toward the same goals. One of the best known competitors is Monaco, who are not quite as far along in development as TenX. At this point in time, TenX is already useable and cards are being issued throughout Europe. Here is an example of the TenX card in action.
As you might imagine, there are all kinds of weird and wonderful laws that TenX must comply with in order for the card to be issued worldwide. If you live in Europe, you can download the TenX app right now and order a debit card. They are more popular than anticipated and have been trying to keep up with demand - so don't expect your card to arrive quickly! If you are outside of Europe, it is a bit of a waiting game right now (I'm waiting too!). The company is in the process of broadening their availability to the global market. The hope is that soon, hopefully in early 2018, TenX will have cards available to North America and other regions outside Europe.
One of the larger hurdles facing TenX is the legal definition of the token - whether it is considered a commodity or a security. This is where things get a little confusing. TenX has an ERC20 token that, essentially, gives the owner a portion of fees paid by retailers, much like the fees VISA or MasterCard collect from a retailer. An owner of, say, 1000 TenX PAY tokens out of the 200 000 000 tokens will get a proportional amount of a 0.5% retailer fee (or 1 000 / 200 000 000 of the 0.5% fee). This would be paid in Ether to the owner's ERC20 wallet holding TenX PAY. So, this is the incentive for holding TenX PAY tokens, in addition to their value increasing through speculation and trade. This creates some legal issues because it might be considered a security in some regions, causing yet more legal hoop-jumping.
The main appeal, to me, is the ease of spending crypto through the COMIT network, which acts to convert the crypto stored on the card to fiat at the point of purchase. As far as the retailer knows, you're just paying with a debit card like any debit card. In the meantime, the COMIT network is firing away in the background. The COMIT network is a pretty brilliant idea whereby various blockchains are interconnected, allowing for ease of transactions. Pretty crazy stuff.
I am eagerly awaiting the rollout of a TenX card to North America. The idea of buying my gasoline or groceries with crypto - a normally mundane activity - just seems so cool to me. 2018 is going to be a pretty amazing year. At least, I hope it's available where I live in 2018!
If you would like to find out more about TenX, check out these websites:
https://www.tenx.tech/
https://blog.tenx.tech/
image source:
bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/tenx-wallet.jpg