Need a Bitcoin Debit Card--需要比特币卡, 中国人知不知道好卡？

Need a Bitcoin Debit Card--需要比特币卡, 中国人知不知道好的卡？

I remember when a US Passport was the best passport in the world. Having a US passport bestowed a lot of advantages on its holder. This is no longer true. It now probably ranks among the worst passports to have in the developed world. About the only advantages it still has is the visa-free travel to most places and superb citizen services at the Embassies and Consulates. But try doing anything financially, not paying taxes when you don't live there, or avoiding ObamaCare and forget it. The US is literally becoming the North Korea of its citizens financial lives as it corrals us with ever more oppressive regulations and laws.

I used to have the best Bitcoin debit card in the world for local use here in China: the ANX HKD UnionPay (银联) debit card. Unfortunately, due to new financial regulations, the provider stopped supporting this card. For compensation, ANX offered a free upgrade to its Elite Visa card to all ANX UnionPay cardholders. Naturally, I submitted my order.

They told me my verification was out of date and that I had to submit new verification documents. So I did. Then I got the bad news: we don't verify US citizens anymore. Sorry. We can help transition you to our new Canadian site that does and accepts USD, but your days trading on ANX and using its debit cards are over, though you can use up any balance you have.

Fuck!

I don't need a Canadian exchange. I don't even have a US bank account. I do all my Bitcoining in RMB and HKD. Why do I want with your Canadian exchange?

Be that as it may, my chief concern was how to spend my Bitcoin since I am largely debanked. Why would I keep money in the bank in this day and age of random confiscations and intrusive government regulation? On sure, I may need to use a bank account momentarily for specific purposes, but store money in it? Ridiculous.

So I started hunting for a new Bitcoin debit card to restore the liquidity I enjoyed for 2 1/2 years courtesy of the good people at ANX. And what I find is that it has became, well, not almost impossible, but very difficult for American expats to obtain one. I have spent about 10 hours over the last 2 days researching this and am not impressed with most of what I saw.

Almost every Bitcoin debit card provider (Wirex, Bit-X, Xapo, Cryptopay, etc.) offer limited no-name anonymous cards for just about anyone from just about anywhere. These cards have ridiculously low lifetimes limits of 2500 USD/EUR or 2000 GBP. Of course you could get several or more of them, but that jacks the fees really high. The fact that they all have exactly the same limits means that they are all subject to international laws on this.

There's your New World Order at work right there. That is like a big old clear track in the sand of the beast that passed by and it's called global government, "the cabal," the dirty animal known as globalism.

So then you need to get an unlimited card, and that of course requires KYC/AML verification. While only a few will ship to the US, virtually none of them allow US citizens to be holders. The ones that allow US citizen cardholders are pretty much only in the US and will only ship to the US (Shift or Bitpay, for example).

Then of course there are the ones that don't really tell you what the limits on residency or citizenship are until you actually start the sign-up process (Wagecan, Uquid), so you have to contact support.

Of course, you could always take your chances with BitPlastic, the shady Russian operation that does ask for any information about anything except for a shipping address and claims never to report any information to anyone, including government agencies. Way too shady to be trusted.

I'm left wondering why no one else in Hong Kong or the Mainland has come up with a UnionPay debit card. Is it the local financial regulations? Would there be no market for it since Chinese don't see it as currency but rather as "investment?" It's really hard to believe that a leading edge company like BTCChina hasn't come up with this yet. They've been out in front in so many other ways, you's think they'd get the ball rolling with Mainland debit cards. Huobi is also a big exchange, but nothing from them either.

BTCChina did after all come up with this gem

Proof of address is a tricky wicket in China too. When you rent, you don't get any utility bills in your name, they all go to the landlord. You don't get bank statements by mail either. You don't even get them by email. You either have to check online or go to the branch or CDM to see your activity. In 13 years of life in China, I've never once had an address associated with my bank account (Not true in Hong Kong though).

There are a lot of Bitcoin debit card providers nowadays, way more than when I first got mine back in 2014. The biggest change I can see besides the rapidly increasing number or debit card offerings is the increasing fees(!) and increasing difficulty for American citizens to get one.

So far, my short list seems to be Wagecan, Bitpay and Wirex. Wirex, if I remember correctly, used to be e-Coin, which, if I remember correctly can be charged with STEEM. That eliminates the step of having to change STEEM to BTC, and possibly changing BTC to fiat. Some cards will convert your BTC to fiat at the point of sale.

Does anyone have any recommendations or experience with Bitcoin debit cards they'd like to share? I'd especially like to hear from Chinese, expats in China, or Americans overseas.

Thanks for reading this Steem verified post and I hope to hear from fellow Steemians.

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