Bitcoin Visa debit cards are cancelled
A few thoughts from a CEO in this space:<p>1. There are very few issuing banks for crypto <> fiat debit cards. Internationally there has been 1 WaveCrest; which as of a few months ago decided to discontinue support.<p>2. Even when a bank will sponsor a crypto <> fiat debit card into one of the payment networks, the company offering the card will face constant pressure from their own bankers.<p>3. This happening is from my perspective just a quick look behind the curtain of the Digital Currency infrastructure problem as it exists today. There is no <i>good</i> way in, or out of digital currency at the moment, and the ones that exist are tenuous at best. The base truth is that Traditional banks are not capable of supporting new methods of value transfer. That means that the companies that build and provide infrastructure for those methods are currently at the mercy of a partner who basically wont help them.<p>I always try and make the charitable assumption about the motives of others and my take on the banking <> digital currency relations is basically this: Banks have a business model that has worked well for generations; they do a little fractional reserve, they extract as many fees as they can invent, and they centralize the control of wealth. The promise of digital currency is that everyone will have the capability to do that for themselves. So, its not surprising to me that it is hard for them to work with those of us who are building bridges and on/off ramps between the two systems.<p>With all of that being said, I am sorry for all of the debit card users who are currently without an off ramp, and I can assure you that the folks at BitPay, Xapo, and all of the other companies that lost access to the EU are working as hard as possible to bring those programs back online.