Did you know you could, near instantly, convert your Hive into custom prepaid Visa cards that can be used nearly anywhere? Thanks to @brianoflondon's work on @v4vapp to bridge Hive to the amazing Lightning Network that is now a possibility. The best part is that the cards are free* and even give you Sats back when you buy one!
Another amazing feature is that there's not even KYC to spend your Hive! You are essentially doing the same thing that you'd do if you went into your local super market and bought a Visa gift card. That's all thanks to an amazing startup called The Bitcoin Company. They work very similar to something like Bitrefill, if you've ever bought from them, allowing you to spend your bitcoin for gift cards.
How Do I Start Spending Hive Anywhere Visa is accepted?
I've included my referral in this tutorial. I'd be humbled if you'd use it but by no means is it a requirement. I think you get 1,000 sats for using it since that's what I got for using someone else's but I haven't seen that promotion listed anywhere so I can't be sure.
Visit The Bitcoin Company and scroll down to 'download this app.'
Pick your preferred Appstore (Google Play Store or Apple App Store) and then download the application to your phone.
Once installed open the app and click 'Create an Account'
Enter your email address and desired password for the app. If you'd be so kind please also include my referral code 2XUK3Y in your registration.
Once signed in click the 'Shop' button at the bottom of the app. This will bring you to a page where you can pick what kind of card you want. Some gift cards will give you a higher amount of Bitcoin back but if you need general usability you can just select a Visa card and get 21 Sats back.
Pick the value of the Visa card you'd like to purchase. You can do any custom amount up to roughly $15 when spending via Hive. If you intend to pay with Bitcoin you can spend anywhere between $1 - $1000 if you plan to convert on the exchange. For this example I'll be selecting $10 and paying with Hive. Once you've made your selection just click 'Continue with purchase'
You then be taken to a confirmation page where you'll confirm your selected amount plus be told what rewards you'll have.
The app will then take you to a payment screen. Click the 'Copy' button on the Invoice line to copy your Lightning Invoice
Visit lnd.v4v.app in your browser and paste your lightning invoice from The Bitcoin Company app into the lightning network invoice tab
After reading the invoice the site will give you the option of paying with Hive or HBD. Once you select you'll then be given the option to sign for the transaction via Hive Signer or Hive Keychain (if available). Once you sign the transaction it will send your Hive or HBD to @v4vapp and they will pay your lightning invoice for you. This may take a few moments for @v4vapp to verify your payment and then pay the lightning invoice.
Once the payment completes you'll be shown a confirmation in your The Bitcoin Company app that the payment has been received.
The Bitcoin Company doesn't charge fees for purchasing prepaid Visa cards. There may be fees imposed on the cards usage based on the card issuer and Visa network. This especially applies outside of the US in foreign transaction fees though they do have international cards available. I've not used the international cards and only the US ones but it's still an easy option to be able to live off Hive.Under the main app visit the 'My Cards' tab to be taken to all of your purchased cards. Anything you've purchased with The Bitcoin Company will be listed here. Click the Visa card you purchased and you'll be taken to that particular gift card page.
Click the blue text below 'Challenge Token' and it should copy to your clipboard. You'll need this in the next step to get your card information. Finish up by clicking 'View Card' to be taken to the card issuer.
Paste your challenge token from the last screen in your challenge token area then click 'View Gift' to be taken to your card information.
You can then use the card number as you need. It works with Google Pay to be able to be taken anywhere tap to pay works.
That's it! You've moved from having Hive to having a Visa card you can use almost anywhere all in 15 steps. You even earned some sats back in your The Bitcoin Company that can then be used like any other lightning wallet. You can save them or send them back to your Hive account with @brianoflondon's new Lightning Address setup.
Run into issues? Let me know in the comments and I'll see if I can help you troubleshoot or point you where you'd need to go for help. I hope this helps everyone be able to move to banking on Bitcoin full time!
Posted from my blog with Exxp : https://patrickulrich.com/2022/05/19/turning-hive-into-prepaid-visa-cards/
Let's stay connected!
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This is a genuinely useful tutorial. I've bookmarked it so I can refer to it later when I've got some Hive to transfer.
Thank you @alyssasanders!
OK, I'm selling some pizza tokens so I can use this and get a PIZZA :D
great article :)
I can't wait until @brianoflondon releases this and some wise folks end up making forks for HE tokens. I'd love to see projects be able to use a dex to convert to Hive and then go straight over lightning to turn stuff like !pizza into Pizza in one click!
Or use SPORTS to buy a new jock strap. 🤣
Seriously though this is my idea. We already have the DEX functionality on SPORTS where you can go from SPORTS to SWAP.HIVE. We just need our own HivePay type service (or partner with one) and then it's almost a one click to go from SPORTS to jock strap. I think it would be awesome for a little league team to post about their games and then have funds to take the kids out for pizza or ice cream after a game.
This is great!
Amazing work done here and only the beginning!💰💸💳💲💯
Can you refill the same visa card or do you have to get a new one each time? Just curious because getting a new card every time would make paying bills a pain. Still would work though.
https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/bill is now a thing, but most of my monthly bills aren’t listed yet since WV seems to not matter.
Yeah their product setup right now is just reselling gift cards essentially so each time you want more funds you have to buy another card and start with a new balance. I've been using the left over small amounts to pay bills like my internet that accepts custom balances.
Bitrefills product is very cool as well. I'm in the same boat where my mortgage company isn't listed yet but I can't wait for that to grow more. Right now @v4vapp is limited to just 100K sats so I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up they could pay their electric bills yet. 😃 It won't be long though!
so you can only spend about 15 dollars? at one time? or send bitcoin from hive engine? is that right?
Yeah right now @v4vapp is limited to 100K sats per transfer I believe. Right now @v4vapp is the bottleneck for converting Hive. @brianoflondon is working to fix this by having a structure of more providers for the lightning bridge but right now you are limited to 100k sats of Hive conversion.
If you converted your Hive into BTC via an exchange into something like Muun wallet then you could go all the way to a $1000 per purchase. I think you can only do 10 transactions a day per account at 1000 though.
I think I can put up my limits very soon. Especially now Bitcoin is down I will increase the liquidity I'm holding on my node and raise limits.
Be good if you can up that limit. 10 dollars is pretty much no use.
Tipping... otherwise yes we need more than $10 for sure.
The bad news is, US only. Good thing it is clear from the beggining in the article.
I've only tested the US version but they also sell international visa cards with the exception of some countries that they don't have relationships in.
Oh God! This is... NEXT LEVEL! Thank you for sharing this information!
Jajaj XD
very cooooool!
Yeah what @brianoflondon is building is really a game changer. He's looking for support to keep expanding his tool. I'd encourage anyone reading this to give the proposal a look.
https://peakd.com/me/proposals/222
voted!
wow this is amazing... but only for the US`?
@tipu curate
International is welcome too! There are some countries that aren't supported but when you look at the Visa card it will show as international instead of US if you purchase outside the states is my understanding. It may have different exchange rates than the US version but I'm not sure.
we can't send money to a bank account with this, however right?
Nope just Visa/giftcards for now. The Bitcoin Company is working on a product that will likely allow you to link banking such as Cashapp/Strike but it won't have the same terms that their gift card setup provides.
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 0/39) Liquid rewards.
Very interest, and good information man
Thank you @ismaelrd04!
great publication, I love it, I will save it to read more in detail, I hope to use the card for my international purchases would save me several steps and commissions, a doubt how much is the maximum amount that can be added to these cards?
You have to purchase the card each time. It's not a loading situation. If you're sending from Hive the limit is 100K sats worth at the moment. That is until @v4vapp raises their limits. If you're using just sats from your own Bitcoin Lightning Wallet then you can do $1000 cards 10x.
This is genuinely exciting. After this recent crash I believe only the projects with strong real life uses will survive.
With this in place you can share content on Hive, get paid for it, then go out and spend those earnings on real life goods? Hive isn't going to just survive this dip, its going to thrive afterward.
Wow! is this available for persons living in the Caribbean?
I'm not 100% which countries aren't supported yet but I know it's very few overall.
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I don't see anything in the way of KYC. Is that the case indefinitely or will it change as growth occurs?
Almost as good as dashdirect Virtualisierung mastercard
Whaaaat! Y’all developers been in beast mode… this is too cool
I used to literally say to people "the day I can buy prepaid visa cards or any type of gift card with hive is the day we have made it". That was always my dream to buy groceries, pay rent etc. with Hive without exchanges!
Very cool, I just used the service with bitrefil a few days ago and it worked like a charm.
Does anyone know of a similar prepaid card service that will work in Australia ?
can I use this for websites that want a normal visa card with the CVC code? Also, do you think 20$ is possible?
great post!
You should definitely be able to use it there especially if you're in the States. I've been paying everything with it. After you claim the card it will show the front when you first visit and then there's a flip for back view button to give you the CVC needed.
The last I heard @v4vapp limits are still 100k sats. That being said if you downloaded a lightning wallet like Wallet of Satoshi you could use it to request 100k sats, pay it via @v4vapp and then repeat until you had enough in sats on WoS to buy the gift card you need that way.
I just made a $20 payment with lightning and it was no problem :)
thanks for the tutorial, really amazing!
Awesome walk through. We need more like this on other topics.
It will certainly be very helpful, to avoid using so many ramps to change our coins, at least it will shorten the path.
Thanks for communicating this and to the developer for their great work.
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I was wondering why you had to leave the @acolytesofhelio now this makes absolute sense ;)
great stuff and I love it!
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