Wirex VS TokenCard: Original Bitcoin Debit Cards & Their Innovative Offspring

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I wanted to showcase Wirex for a couple different reasons.

The first being this card has been reviewed many times as a solid Bitcoin debit card, and the second reason is that it serves as a good benchmark to show just how far other projects have advanced the idea of crypto debit cards.

Wirex was launched in 2015 after raising $200,000 from crowdfunding through the BnktotheFuture platform.
This is a stark contrast compared to the amount being raised by the popular ICOs today.
This card connects with Visa and MasterCard and works with USD, Euro, Pound, and Bitcoin.
Even though Wirex works with USD, this card is not available to US residents.

To see the full list of available countries, don’t worry, there are many, check out the link that is posted down below.

If I’m understanding my research correctly, you cannot fund your Wirex account with fiat. Instead, you’ll have to fund this card with Bitcoin or a number of different alt coins- these you’ll be able to find by checking out the links down below. Conversely, I believe you can only spend in USD, Euro, Pound or BTC.

if you think your card is stolen or being used without your permission, you can instantly freeze your card without the need to submit a request to Wirex.
One major hangup that I have with this card is the fact that Wirex is not anonymous. At least they don’t pretend to be, It’s stated very plainly on its terms and conditions page that they will share your spending information to be monitored by AML. They’ll also share your identity and address to regulators without notifying you.

But if that doesn’t bother you and you’re still interested in this one, you’ll be happy to know that this card offers 24/7 support if you ever need help.

Tokencard-
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1887092.520

Tokencard on the other hand held it’s ICO two months ago that raised 12.7 million dollars in under an hour.

This shows the ICO craze now compared to the time of Wirex crowdfunding campaign.

Tokencard is not yet available to the public.

They are focusing on Ethereum and ERC20 tokens for the foreseeable future, this is because the users will hold their tokens in a smart contract wallet.
Their UI will be a contract wallet and you can use any Ethereum browser that you prefer.
They are not partnered with Visa as was previously advertised, instead they are teamed up with an Issuing Bank in Gibraltar

Because Tokencard uses smart contracts, this means you would be able to set up recurring payments and pre authorizations as long as you have enough funds to cover it.

They plan on releasing their minimum viable product within 120 days if their ICO, so in September of 2017.

This MVP will be made available to 500 of the early adopters of tokencard’s token, called… TKN, which I’m guessing is short for token.

The general public release 1.0 will be rolled out 240 days after their ICO, so we can expect to see this at the end of the year or the beginning of 2018 if all goes well.

Once again, Tokencard will not be available to residents in the US or India, this may change as time goes on.

Tokencard has some interesting ideas for taking advantage of the smart contract features provided by the Ethereum Network that will help this card differentiate itself from its competition.

These features will not be available on their MVP but will be for future releases include:

  • Multiple asset spending- taking a bit from different assets during one transaction,
  • Portfolio spending- keeping a specified allocation of your assets

Of course they are incentivizing the use of their token, TKN by removing the 1% licensing fee for purchases made using the TKN token.

They also will have a “cash and burn” option which I’ll be honest I haven’t quite been able to fully understand what the motivation behind this is besides limiting the supply of the TKN token so that others can benefit from a higher payout if they in turn decided to burn their TKN tokens for a share of the accrued licensing fees.
If this is something you’d like to learn more about you can certainly take a peek at TokenCard’s white paper where they spell out the mathmatical equations they use to accomplish this.

Additional Reading/Sources:

Wirex Website
Wirex Review by DarknetMarkets- Includes Countries and Alt coins Accepted
BitcoinTalk Review of Wirex
BnktotheFuture
TokenCard Website- Download Whitepaper Here
AMA with TokenCard

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