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Who needs an exit ramp? Ether.fi Plans Visa Card for Crypto Degens
The newest product from the liquid restoration startup Ether.fi could finally help the “paper rich” degens encryption Turn your blockchain investments into spending money.
Ether.fi Cash will be a mobile wallet and Visa credit card that lends USDC, the popular US dollar-pegged stablecoin, against decentralized finance (DeFi) investments and can be paid directly via crypto.
“Our mission is to build a suite of integrated applications that make DeFi truly usable for regular people,” he said Ether.fi founder Mike Silagadze. “Money is your spending account, with the dream that you never have to leave” the blockchain. “Off-ramping” refers to the tedious (and expensive) process of converting between cash and crypto.
Today, Ether.fi is better known as a service to funnel assets to EigenLayer, the Ethereum-based reestablishment giant that helps investors secure emerging blockchain services in exchange for rewards. EigenLayer attracted around $18 billion in deposits last year, with more than $5.5 billion coming from users who initially deposited their money in Ether.fi in exchange for eETH tokens – a kind of EigenLayer deposit receipt that can be traded on crypto markets like any other asset.
In addition to the “Stake” program, Ether.fi also has a “Liquid” program where users can deposit their funds into vaults that follow manually selected trading strategies.
Ether.fi Cash cardholders will be able to borrow funds against their Stake or Liquid deposits and use the interest from these investments to automatically pay their bills. Users can alternatively convert assets directly into USDC, enabling instant settlement.
With Cash, “you go up once to Ether.fi and then you will never have to leave the ramp again because you can save, invest and spend all your money,” said Silagadze. “You can get paid in crypto and you can just live your life normally without connecting to the TradFi ecosystem. ” Ether.fi aims to offer a crypto-centric rewards program similar to those offered by Chase and other legacy card providers. It also aims to differentiate itself from traditional credit cards through its fee structure, which will follow the DeFi market, rather than the standard 15-30% APR charged by normal credit cards.
Cash is not the first attempt at a crypto-based card, but Silagadze insists that previous attempts to build similar products have resulted in “garbage”.
“Most of them are Visa debit cards,” he said. “Visa debit cards are useless because you can only use them for hotels and car rentals. You can’t use them for many things. They’re just not practical.”
“This is a real credit card,” Silagadze emphasized.
He expects Cash to be rolled out to consumers from September, but it is unlikely, for regulatory reasons, to be available in some major markets, including the US.
Using cryptocurrencies as money will always have its unique complexities – from market considerations to tax implications.
“Initially this was designed for crypto-natives,” said Silagadze, “but if someone is thinking about becoming a proper degen, looking at something like this might make them feel, ‘Okay, this really helps me navigate this universe. ‘”.