Review of Blockcard By Ternio [TERN]

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. The information on this site is for informational purposes and isn’t financial advice. I cannot guarantee that you will have the same results as I have nor can I guarantee that the information shared here is appropriate for you. I am not employed by Ternio, LLC nor do they pay me for writing this blog. I share referral links on this site which offer financial incentives but my opinions are my own. I am not also not a tax consultant or a CPA.

Spoiler: I think the Blockcard is the most competitive, aggressive and best debit card on the market today. It’s not without its flaws but here is an in-depth look at the crypto card with my own personal experience.

Links

https://dashboard.getblockcard.com/i/qIBGnamb

Exchanges that I’ve tried:

https://stellarterm.com/

https://h5.bitmart.com/invite-gift/

https://www.probit.com/r/17181778

https://vindax.com/?ref=63ea5634f123437561603af0706668d6

Introduction: Blockcard by Ternio

BlockCard is a pre-paid debit card that you can get up to 6% cash back on all your purchases. “6% cash back?” You ask. Yep 6% cash back and much more with a few quarks about it. But first, how did I stumble on Blockcard? I have been somewhat following crypto for years. I was first introduced to crypto almost a decade ago when Bitcoin was just a small project but it wasn’t until April 2020 that I made my first crypto purchase. I became very active on Reddit and Facebook until one day I came across a post referencing Blockcard. I did some research and there were a lot of mixed information on the card but I found it fairly intriguing. Keep in mind, I did apply for a Ruby card from Crypto.com and I was somewhat heavily invested over there (which now I am a Jade card holder but that’s a topic for another day). After some debating, I impulsively dove into the BlockCard on June 26, 2020. This is my review after my first 30 days, and what a journey the first 30 days had brought me.

Getting Started

The system is simple. If you stake 145,000 TERN (staking crypto generally means putting the money away in like a CD but in this case you get no interest) in a month-to-month contract you get 6% cash back on your spending while using the card. The fees are very clear on their website but the main fees are basically: 1) $10 to activate your debit card (you get a digital one within minutes and I got my plastic card in the mail 7 days later), and 2) if you don’t spend at least $750 in a month then you get charged $5.

“Wait what? $5 fee if I don’t spend $750? What a rip off!” I hear you say. Well at least that was what I said and then what my wife told me when I told her about the card. But if you think about it there are premium credit cards out there that have an annual fee similar to $60/year but in my experience this card will save you much more money than potentially any other card on the market. Another consideration, if you spend $100 and you have the 6% return then that pays for the card in itself. Spend $200 in a month and you are golden. If we manage to spend all our expenses on the card then we definitely hit that $750 price target but here is the kicker… We will probably save a lot more than 6%.

Purchasing TERN

Blockcard currently works by depositing crypto and they instantly convert it to TERN. What is TERN? It is a crypto built on Stellar/ETH networks that is the native token for Ternio. This doesn’t mean you have to give up your favorite exchanges or wallets but to simply put it, you drop your spending money into the account and buy stuff. But the issue at hand is, Ternio never sells TERN less than .008 so if you deposit a stablecoin like 100 USDC and the price is at .006 then they will give you TERN at the rate of .008 only giving you 12,500 TERN. This is where it gets tricky because your account balance will show that you only have $75 worth of TERN and people think that Ternio charged them a $25 processing fee but this is not the case. They have a price floor and that’s just the price you get.

This is what the dashboard looks like for my account.

The difference between Spendable Balance and Total Balance, is that you must keep at least $10 in the account to keep your debit card active. This is a safeguard for Ternio/yourself. The value of TERN fluctuates constantly like most cryptos (or stocks) and so at the time of writing my 58,645 TERN is worth $410.52 which makes TERN worth approximately .007 USD. Throughout my time with TERN I have seen it fluctuate from .006 through .009.

On StellarTerm you can see the value of TERN on a chart but in my experience the prices don’t always add up to the same as the website, for example at the time of writing it shows the value of TERN at .0072 which is .0002 off. From my perspective, this is the part that gets a lot of people. They see a fluctuating crypto and they dont like that. But the value is, what if you could consistently buy TERN at .007 and shop when it was any price above that? The price is most certainly not going to stay at these ranges but the trick is acquiring TERN as low as you can and buy at a price more expensive. In order to find the best price possible, you are going to want to follow different exchanges and this helps you to get around the .008 price floor from TERN. These are the current exchanges that I have seen:

Exchanges

StellarTerm, Bitmart, Vindax, StellarX, and ProBit (and a couple more).

Ternio has listed their coin on these exchanges and their price is often lower than the .008 minimum on the website and it is simple and easy to transfer in the money. What does that mean? I have had the fortunate luck of buying cheaper and at the point of sale having my money being worth 12% or more when swiping. Here are my savings for a month’s worth of spending. A couple notes: Total % saved is factoring in my cash back rewards with the difference in TERN (price purchased vs sold). I did mess up on my original deposit because I deposited the $1433.66 straight into the website and I didn’t acquire the TERN coins on an exchange which would have saved me even more money and raised my overall % saved. But, overall I cannot complain saving an average just shy of 17%. Also, I don’t normally spend $3,470 in a month. That is very abnormal for us but with a baby in the near future and some investments, we managed to spend quite a bit of money which help boost our total dollar amount saved.

My Transactions

Practicalities of purchasing with the Blockcard

If you like to online shop, this card is an absolute money maker. Regardless if you are buying on amazon, groceries online, or maybe you have an online business and are running some google ads. This card can make you some big money.
They pay you your rewards at the end of your 30 day commitment.

With the price of TERN fluctuating throughout the day, this card sometimes feels more of an opportunity card than a regular debt card. I constantly find myself waiting for the TERN to reach my buy-in price (or higher) before checking out on my online purchases. When I am out locally, like at a grocery store, I have mixed results on if I can charge my card or not. Here are my big takeaways:

TERN is not my default spending card but rather my go-to card when the price is good. Great for purchases that can wait but if you are in a physical store, its not practical to wait indefinitely for the price to go up (although tempting to wait just a little longer).
Ternio in my opinion is awesome! Their subreddit is not… Its practically nonexistent. I’ve tried communicating there but it just doesn’t happen. TERNIO PLEASE work on your reddit. Build a community there! I beg of you! But on the plus side, their Telegram is extremely active where the CEO and founder himself is active and will respond to you directly. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy that I can talk to the big man in charge and he has even acknowledged something that I’ve said and told me that it was a good suggestion.
While not covered in this review/guide, in my dashboard you can see a bank account! Yeah that’s a thing. You can open a bank account with them and deposit cash and it will stay in cash until sent out. They claim it is a crypto friendly account which may make it easier for you to send money to other crypto platforms (and maybe keep your personal bank… more personal. Or who knows maybe this will be your new bank!). The real value in this in my opinion is… If the price is consistently over .008 (and I really hope they don’t raise the minimum price on their website), then you could instantly deposit money into TERN and instantly buy which would avoid price fluctuation problems. But! that might not be completely necessary because if I understand them right they are releasing an option to spend USD on the card to avoid price fluctuations. This would be sooooo sweet but yet sad not saving that 17% average. But having choices is always good right?
And finally this was not covered, but this project is TINY. The market cap is only 5 million USD. That’s crazy cheap! What does this mean? This project, in my personal opinion (and definitely not financial advice), is dirt cheap and they have their white label program where other businesses will be using their platform reskinned to their logo… And Europe should be coming this year to the Blockcard platform… This will be huge for their platform and price. In Europe, they have access to the curve card which basically lets you move money around from one credit card to another AFTER purchasing. What does that mean? TERNIO + Curve card = absolute savings. What if you could save 20%, 30%, or even up to 40% on all your savings without risk? This would be a no brainer! Of course, the price of TERN will have to shoot up to match the demand and you probably wont have price swings like you do today… So… I regrettably state that my opinion is that your massive savings of up to 40% are limited to now. But given the huge savings I’ve already had in just 30 days, I believe TERN will be the crypto of the year. The real winner of the market and will see tremendous absolutely crazy growth in the next half year. Again just my opinion, do you own due diligence. Which leads me to restate…

If you have found this review helpful, please sign up with my referral links. I will be releasing more content both crypto related and non-crypto related. If you found this guide helpful and wish to deposit some TERN here is my wallet 🙂