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Gift cards have long been the go-to for last-minute holiday shoppers — easy to buy, easy to wrap, and usually appreciated. But many of those cards end up forgotten in drawers, unspent or lost to expiration dates. A new kind of gift card aims to change that by turning gifting into an investment opportunity: Bitcoin.
Fold (NASDAQ:FLD), a fintech company founded to make Bitcoin more accessible to everyday consumers, recently launched what it calls the first-ever Bitcoin gift card. The cards are being rolled out to major retailers nationwide through a partnership with Blackhawk Network, one of the largest gift card distributors in the U.S.
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“Fold was founded with the idea that Bitcoin could be an incredible tool for savings for everyday people, specifically for millennials who are finding it increasingly hard to build savings,” Fold CEO Will Reeves told Benzinga. “And Bitcoin has been the best performing asset of the last decade.”
Fold started by letting users earn Bitcoin instead of traditional cash-back or airline miles rewards. Since its founding, Reeves says customers have earned over $90 million in Bitcoin rewards, compared to less than $20 million had they opted for cash back.
The Bitcoin gift card functions like a traditional one, but with digital potential. Shoppers can buy the card online or off a retail shelf for a set dollar amount. The recipient redeems it by downloading the Fold app, where the Bitcoin value is instantly credited to their account.
Reeves explained that the process eliminates many of the hurdles typically involved in gifting crypto. “It doesn’t require them to already have a Bitcoin wallet or to really understand Bitcoin,” he said.
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Once redeemed, recipients can save, spend, or even cash out their Bitcoin through Fold’s app.
“You can send it to someone else, you can turn it into physical cash at an ATM, you can use it to spend on a debit card, and earn more Bitcoin rewards,” Reeves told Benzinga. “So it creates a great and very flexible environment for people to receive Bitcoin.”
