ether.fi Cash is a Credit Card unlike any other. It’s a new way to off-ramp your crypto. It’s a new way to borrow against your crypto. It’s a new way to spend.
In this post we will go over all aspects of what makes ether.fi Cash unique and why we love it and think you will too.
The Background
The last few years have seen crypto innovation at its best. From decentralized exchanges, to lending protocols and much more. You can do all sorts of things that have been traditionally kept within financial institutions and larger traders and pre-80s software. DeFi is empowering, yet still not the most user-friendly to navigate. One major pain point for any crypto native person was the crypto to fiat off-ramp.
Traditionally, crypto people off-ramp their crypto assets by depositing to a centralized exchange and connecting their fiat bank account. After withdrawing to their fiat bank account, they spend using debit cards or bank transfers.
This puts a lot of trust in the centralized exchange. Why all the burden of using DeFi if you end up having to go through a centralized entity anyways?
This is where ether.fi Cash comes in.
The Concept
ether.fi Cash is a credit card. Unlike crypto-based credit cards, you don’t top it up with fiat funds. Unlike traditional credit & debit cards you don’t top it up or pay it back with slow bank transfers. Here’s how it works with Cash:
- Hold crypto assets a Cash account (a Gnosis Safe completely under your control)
- When you use your Cash card, funds are taken from your Gnosis Safe.
No gas or off-ramp fees, and without you having to wait 3–5 business days for your off-ramped funds to arrive before being able to spend them
ether.fi is now your full stack financial platform in pure Crypto.
With ether.fi, you can save with Stake, you invest with Liquid, and you can now spend with Cash. All that without ever leaving Crypto for any fiat rails.
All of that plus on-chain card management like spending limits adjustments (per transaction, day, month), card freezing and more.
Did we mention it works with Apple Pay and Google Pay?
The Borrowing
ether.fi Cash also makes it easy to borrow against your eETH and Liquid positions on the fly.
Imagine holding 10 eETH and wanting to buy a new iPhone. With ether.fi Cash, you just deposit your 10 eETH into your Cash account, set your Borrowing preferences and go and buy your iPhone.
How does this work?
- Your 10 eETH is turned into a position
- You automatically borrow against this position the amount of your transaction (say 1200 USDC for the iPhone)
- Simply pay for the phone as you normally would! A lending position is opened and the payment is settled within the blink of an eye.
And all of that gas-less.
The Gnosis Safe
We mentioned that you hold your ether.fi Cash assets in a Gnosis Safe. But what does this mean?
Traditionally, crypto credit/debit cards always had custody of your funds at least shortly before you go to make a transaction. You had to manually convert your crypto to fiat or move funds to a non-custodial wallet for transactions to go through.
With the ether.fi Credit Card, your funds will remain in a Gnosis Safe with you being under full control of your crypto at all times. You can set spending limits for your card on-chain, and only that amount will be available for the card to spend.
This is the only pure non-custodial solution to a crypto-to-fiat bridge.
The Perks
All of our credit card tiers will allow you to collect Cash Points as you use your card, redeemable for USDC, VIP crypto conference tickets and other great services.
We also offer:
- Great interest rates on borrowing
- Premium concierge services for higher tier cards
- High quality metal cards
- Lounge access, private parties and more!
- Crypto conference passes
- Low FX rates
You can even collect Cash Points during special crypto events by just using your ether.fi card.
The Recap
- Traditional credit cards don’t work with crypto
- Most crypto credit cards in the wild right now tend to be custodial solutions with subpar conversion and fx rates, with very few perks
- The ether.fi Cash credit card will make spending crypto a breeze. You’ll be able to spend USDC directly or borrow against yield bearing assets that pay themselves off while you spend
The Cash team will be at Token2049 in Singapore (September 2024)
Join us there and maybe you’ll get something special!
Follow us on X @ether_fi
