Hey guys, I want to share my favourite travel hack with you: Fly First/Business class for free, by doing simple arbitrage trades and generate airline award/reward miles with Bitcoin.
It works with most airlines alliances: OneWorld, Star Alliance, Sky Team and more - depending on your airline credit card reward program. Of course this is absolutely legal but make sure you read your banks terms of service before.
I usually do this once a week and generate enough miles for 2x return long-haul business class flights.
Here we go...
What you need
- Verified account on CEX, Coinbase or Paxful
- Verified account on LocalBitcoins
- Credit card with a good airline reward program (Citi, Chase, Barclays, HSBC are great!)
How it works
Buy Bitcoin - Generate Flight Miles
Go to your CEX, Coinbase or Paxful account and buy Bitcoin with your preferred credit card that gives you the most reward miles. Example: I buy Bitcoin worth 10,000USD with my card and receive 36500 reward miles. The miles are usually credited within 4-7 business days.Sell Bitcoin - Withdraw the money back to your card or bank account
I recommend to sell the BTC on LocalBitcoins where you can quickly sell with a 5-10% profit and you get the funds transferred directly to your bank account. Alternatively if you don't want to use LocalBitcoins you just wait until the BTC price is 5-10% up and withdraw the funds from CEX, Coinbase or Paxful account back to your credit card or bank account.
Important
- Always sell your Bitcoin with 5-10% profit since the credit card transaction fee can be 3.5% or higher and the extra gain can pay the fuel surcharges and airport taxes that still apply when you redeem flight tickets with reward miles.
- If you have to declare cryptocurrency transactions to your tax authority, keep all records of these transactions.
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BTC: 1KSTGoHj4bEj1QTpfm3cisufsioZgRH5TA
ETH: 0xc39ffA8e710E7188B0711aaC9B9F5b9960367deC
LTC: LfqQ7CnHepSDbVmXke7gwNnf4H1GUMhC4A
Questions? Feedback?
Leave me a comment and I will try help you out and answer all your questions.
Such a good article!
Nice article and good way of earning some miles - just have to be careful you buyat a good price im assuming not an all time high? I have a southwest card I might try something similiar. What card do you use? Upvoted followed and will check back pls do the same i need all the help i can get on here! :)
Yes of course you shouldn't buy on a BTC pump ;)
I have several cards, but usually I'm using my Citi (Singapore) card to get KrisFlyer miles.
Thanks for the upvote and your support!