I listened to the Chain Chatter recording with one of the prominent figures of the Thorchain ecosystem.
I admit I didn't understand everything Khal and "JP Thor" talked about, not paying full attention to all the novelties coming to Thorchain in real-time, as Khal does, understandably, since he is deeply invested over there.
JP Thor said a couple of interesting things, and I appreciate their focus on decentralization, where they meet well with Hive, and the fact that Thorchain offers blockchain-agnostic services using native coins and tokens. And when we say Thorchain, you can think of the Maya Protocol where LEO is listed as the younger and more playful brother of Thorchain.
I got very curious toward the end of the meeting when JP Thor talked about the ThorWallet interface, which included the possibility of on/off ramps.
So, after the recording was over, I looked it up, to see what this was all about.
Well... I guess I was expecting wonders... But we are still way too soon to expect a global solution that doesn't go through the infrastructure of the current card issuer behemoths or the banking system.
There are some good points too:
- you can get a free Swiss bank account "
- you can get a free VISA card, linked to crypto and the Thorchain ecosystem "
(") if you are from one of the supported countries. See FAQ.
Now, Swiss bank accounts aren't as private as they used to be - and it wouldn't matter anyway since you'd use the VISA network - but it still has a certain "global censorship resistance" sound to it, even though stained by tenebrous stories of massive wealth being "lost" in that system post world wars.
Back to ThorWalet's VISA cards... As we have seen other projects that offer VISA cards, they are tiered-based, and tiers are set based on the stake of TGT held.
The Standard tier offers:
- Free Bank Account (CHF, EUR, USD)
- Free EUR Visa Debit Card
- No Reward Multiplier
- 1 % Crypto Topup & FX fee
and has no stake requirement.
The offer talks about a reward multiplier, but I haven't found other mentions regarding what the reward is. Is it cashback or something else? And "no reward multiplier" means "no rewards"? If we look at the "Community" tier and see a 1x multiplier, I am inclined to think "no multiplier" means "no rewards". That makes sense since there is no staking requirement.
Other than the reward multiplier, nothing is different between the tiers, higher tiers also pay the same 1% Crypto Topup fee and FX fee.
At this point, I wonder why would anyone want to be in a higher tier than Standard.
The base currency of the card is EUR and can be topped up with Arbitrum USDC or directly debit to the Euro bank account.
If you already have another crypto-linked VISA card, why would you be interested in this one? And why not?
Pros:
- from my understanding from the scratchy information I've read so far, this comes with an individual (Swiss) bank account, not a segregated one for multiple clients, controlled by the 3rd party company (like in the case of Crypto.com card, for example)
- may be preferable if you need a EUR-based card
- the ThorWallet VISA cards are linked to the Thorchain ecosystem, so by using it instead of another crypto-linked VISA card you have, you may shorten the number of transactions and amount of fees needed to pay to off-ramp in some cases
- no need for a CEX middleman; Crypto.com has pretty high fees from what I remember, so I expect the swap fees on ThorWallet would be more competitive
Cons:
- 1% fee to top up the account with crypto; this fee can be avoided if you wire fiat to the bank account directly
- staking requirements if you want to access higher tiers (I don't see a reason to, without further explanations)
- like all fiat operations, these go through regulated operators you may know little about; in this case, they are called "Fiat24"; you would become their customer, and go through KYC, with the whole package that implies
- hidden things?
They seem at the beginning of the road with ThorWallet, so frankly, I wouldn't be in a hurry to get this card. Maybe later...