America has a special relationship with credit card cashback... I remember years ago, @jimmysong writing this excellent piece for BM -- "Airline Miles Are The Original Altcoins" #19290 -- where he spelled out the implication:
Trying to maximize rewards points bonus shit is a $8/hr side gig
Yes, you get the occasional freebie which feels amazing and it's like free money up for grabs, but let's face it: it's a lot of extra ridiculous admin-hopping work: maximize this, minimum spend that, match the right card for the right rewards blah-blah-blah, leverage enough rewards to cover the up-front/annual fees etc.
I used to have a bitcoin plugin ("Satsback," I believe they're called?) to chase those extra sats. I uninstalled it and stopped thinking about it because it's just too much hassle (even if I got a couple of thousand sats now and again -- I'm as greedy an assmilker as the next dude, but cmon... pop-ups and extra-clicks for every purchase? That's the line!)
Courtesy of the wise masters in Brussels, us Europeans don't have this problem. Cashbacks are not a thing -- mostly, I imagine, because they were more or less priced out of the behind-the-scenes fee market among card machine operators. Banks and card issuers etc have fees ridiculously capped and so there's no dough to dash out to consumers.
Alas, step by step Bitcoin is becoming the incumbent system it tried to replace, so now we get BTC credit cards with cash back
Crypto companies are turning to a tried-and-true trick from the banking world to entice new users, but with a major curveball.
Coooooinbase is such a fiat company:
with cardholders able to earn up to 4% back in bitcoin for everyday purchases. Applying for the card, available this fall, will require a subscription to Coinbase’s premium crypto-trading service. High-profile crypto companies including the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini and Crypto.com have announced similar offerings. The rewards would be paid through customer accounts on the exchanges.
Sahil Zaveri, a 30-year-old cardiology fellow and bitcoin enthusiast in New York City, is among those who mostly see the cards’ upside. He signed up for the Gemini credit card and likes that the rewards instantly hit his Gemini account after every transaction.
“Just imagine when bitcoin hits $200,000 my rewards would have already doubled,” he said. “And I did nothing for it.”
Age-old internet wisdom:
ANSWER: from shafting merchants and/or other customers who effed up their points/cashback-chasing spends. Natural pushback:
archive: https://archive.md/FTVgI