How to Spend Your Crypto in the Real World  

Crypto Debit Cards Are Here and They’re Very Useful 

My wife has absolutely no idea what crypto is all about. But she absolutely loves it. Because she’s spending it every day as she walks around here in Prague. 

I’m laughing as I write that last sentence, which means we should go back a couple weeks, to mid-January.  

Yulia, that’s my wife, was sitting on the couch in the family room when she looked up at me in my little office space in the loft. I saw her, smiled, and waved like Forrest Gump. 

She laughed and said, “Let me guess…crypto again?” 

I shrugged.  

She was right. As usual. 

I spend hours every day finding, researching, and analyzing all manner of crypto…from the latest moves in bitcoin, to new emerging coins with the potential for massive growth, to non-fungible tokens—the one-off, one-of-a-kind cryptocurrencies that exploded in popularity over the last year and now represent ownership of everything from fine art to a piece of a crypto company. 

But I realized she wasn’t really involved in the process.  

She just sees me up here writing, or on conference calls interviewing crypto project teams from literally all around the world. I decided right then, after my goofy Forrest Gump wave, that I would bring her into the process in some small way…bring her into the crypto age in a way that would resonate with her. 

See, we are absolutely in that new age of crypto. Do not let any naysayer convince you otherwise. 

The crypto age began in 2009 with bitcoin, the granddaddy of the cryptosphere. It progressed to Ethereum, the silver to bitcoin’s gold. And then it exploded to more than 8,000 cryptocurrencies, some more important than others.  

Now, we have crypto-banks, as well as those NFTs I mentioned. 

Increasingly, those two—crypto-banks and NFTs—offer a passive income…that is a regular income simply from depositing some crypto in an account or buying one of the NFTs. And I thought: What a cool way to bring Yulia into this world—by letting her learn about and also be the beneficiary of that income. 

So, I decided to hand her control of one of the passive income streams I’ve developed in crypto…a stream that’s generating $500 to $700 per month…so she can use that money on a day-to-day basis in the real world. 

Here’s how I did it… 

First, I had her sign up for an account at Crypto.com, one of the leading crypto exchanges in the world.  

Accounts are available to all U.S. residents…unless you live in New York. Sorry, New Yorkers. You have an over-eager financial regulator who blocks access to most of the best opportunities in crypto. However, you can open an account at Coinbase, and it offers a debit card as well. 

Once her account was up and running, she applied for a Crypto.com debit card—the free version. (Several other versions require that you own the Crypto.com token, called CRO, in increasingly larger amounts, but I see no reason to pay for that. Also, note: I don’t get anything from Crypto.com for telling you any of this. Just sharing with you a service I use.) 

With her crypto-based debit card, she can now: 

• Convert the crypto earnings into USDC, a stablecoin that tightly tracks the U.S. dollar with minimal volatility (and I mean fractions of a penny on any given day); 
• Send that USDC directly to her Crypto.com account; 
• And then go about her day in Prague, shopping and dining, and using the USDC on her debit card to fund her purchases. 

So, some of my crypto earnings are flowing directly to Yulia’s crypto account. The account links directly to a debit card she can use to play with. (This is absolutely something you can do too…earn a regular income from your crypto and spend it in the real world.) 

Yulia never bothers Jeff about spending so much time researching and writing about crypto because she is a direct beneficiary of that research, and she is actively involved in managing a small part of it. 

I just realized: I might have found the prescription for marital bliss…crypto, and income-based crypto/NFT opportunities tied to funding a spouse’s debit card. 

I gotta write a self-help book…