How do I SPEND my Bitcoin?

So, in 2026, the best way to spend your Bitcoin is Coinbase. And I'll talk about the snafoos I've had with Coinbase, but Coinbase gives you two ways to spend Bitcoin. One is a Coinbase debit card. The debit card directly converts Bitcoin to whatever the local currency is at the time of the purchase, and it fills out all your tax forms for you, and it does all that sort of stuff. Okay, so Coinbase is the best option. And the Coinbase debit card is the most direct way to spend your Bitcoin. The second most direct way to spend your Bitcoin is the Coinbase credit card. The credit card lets you spend US dollars throughout the month and then it pays off your credit card balance uh at the end of the billing period, which for mine is like the 27th of each month. And you can choose whether you want it to pay from a traditional bank account automatically or you whether you want to pay it off manually when you want to or if you want it to pay from your Bitcoin balance. Now, as the point I was just making is of course if all you own is Bitcoin like me, then your credit card balance at Coinbase is going to pay from your Bitcoin balance because that's all you got. So, it's an easy choice. So, I have my Coinbase credit card set to automatically pay from my Bitcoin balance on the 27th of every month, which is the date it randomly automatically selected for me. And it just autopays the balance from my Bitcoin balance uh at the time of the 27th. Okay. And then uh I don't like the credit card's weight because it's 17 grams or 15 grams. Anyway, it's too heavy. So, I carry the debit card with me everywhere because it it's more direct and I just like using actual Bitcoin instead of acrewing US dollar liabilities and then paying them off once a month. So, that is the best option. Coinbase is your best option for spending Bitcoin. And that's probably going to be the case for the near future. Okay. But what do you do in a situation like I am in right now where my Coinbase account is locked due to a snafu in their uh the Coinbase interface. So, the Coinbase interface wants me to fill out some sort of additional verification, but there's a glitch, a bug in the software code that puts me in an infinite loop. It just refreshes over and over and over and I never can actually do the thing they want me to do, which means my Coinbase account will not let me do anything. Uh, which means the debit card doesn't work because I can't convert Bitcoin to anything else. So, the debit card doesn't work because that conversion cannot happen because the account is needs additional verification. And the credit card still works, but I can't pay it off with my Bitcoin balance. Um, so I would have to liquidate Bitcoin from somewhere else, move it to a fiat bank account, and then pay the credit card off that way. But I think Coinbase will fix the glitch. They're they've got an amazing engineering team. It's a great platform. They'll get it fixed. It's just broken right now for me. So, what would I do in a world where I could not use Coinbase? All right, there's a couple services like Crypto.com, but they have their own CRO token, which I really don't like. Any company that has their own crypto token is sounds way too much like FTX with the FTT token to me. Uh, plus Crypto.com, I think, is headquartered in Singapore. It's a long way away. I just I I I don't trust Crypto.com yet. If you're using it, good for you. you should store your Bitcoin on Bit Key anyway um rather than Crypto.com. But if that's where you're buying and selling it, and if you're using their debit card to spend your Bitcoin, great, good for you. But I've just never gone down that road because I don't like the fact that they have their own token. I don't like the fact that they're uh doiciled far far away in Singapore. And it just I don't know, it just it's probably fine, but I would just rather use a US-based exchange. So, if I could not use Coinbase [clears throat] at all, uh first of all, even if my Coinbase account ended up locked for months, uh what I would, which I don't think it will, but even if it does, what I would do is I would use River and I would liquidate Bitcoin on River and move it to a fiat bank account, Wells Fargo in my case. So, I would liquidate Bitcoin on River and if I needed to, you know, push push Bitcoin from Bitkey to River, liquidate it, push it to a fiat bank account and then uh pay that off uh with the Bitcoin. Now, so that's that's you know, that's what I would do if I uh you know, if I had to come up with an interim solution. Again, it's sort of a lot of steps. You're moving the Bitcoin from Bit Key to River. You're liquidating it on River to US dollars. you're moving the US dollars to a fiat bank account, uh, in this case, Wells Fargo, and then you're paying off the Coinbase credit card from Wells Fargo. That's kind of roundabout. It's kind of annoying to do it that way. Um, so another option would be Gemini has a credit card and it also has 2% Bitcoin back and all of that. So Gemini has a credit card, but you can't directly pay it off with your Bitcoin balance, which is why I use Coinbase instead of Gemini. Um, so they may change that over time or they may already have changed that over time, but the last time I checked they hadn't, meaning you had to pay the balance. You could not pay the balance with your Bitcoin. Now, you could liquidate Bitcoin on Gemini and then pay the balance that way. Um, so that's probably I'm trying to think if I was not just coming up with like an interim solution waiting for Coinbase to start working again, I would probably switch to Gemini and use the Gemini Bitcoin credit card. Uh, and then I would just pay it off with my, you know, every month I would liquidate enough Bitcoin on Gemini to pay off the balance with the resulting US dollars. And you can do that like at one time. So you can liquidate the US dollars to Bitcoin to US dollars and literally, you know, one second later, you pay off your uh your balance. Now again, they might let you pay off the credit card with your Bitcoin balance, but the last time uh I checked, they would not let you directly do that. you had to pay it off with a fiat balance, which means you have to manually do that conversion. Now, that's why I like Coinbase. Coinbase does that for you. So, the Coinbase credit card will automatically pay from your Bitcoin balance. It'll convert your Bitcoin to fiat. It will do it all for you, which is again why Coinbase for the time being is better. Okay, so let's recap because this gets complicated. So, best option is Coinbase. Either the debit card or the credit card. And if you're not sure which to use, I've done an entire video on the pros and cons. In fact, there's two videos. One one is on the Coinbase credit card specifically, and another is on the differences between the Coinbase uh credit card and the Coinbase debit card. So, if you want to find those, just go to my YouTube channel and search for the word card, C A R D, or the word Coinbase card or the words credit card or something like that. and it gives you a walkthrough of all the pros and cons of Coinbase uh credit card versus debit card. So, that's what I would do if I had to right now. Uh again, work around while Coinbase is not working for me is liquidate on River, push to Wells Fargo, um and then pay it off on Coinbase from Wells Fargo because Coinbase will not let me pay it off on Coinbase uh while my account's locked. But again, they're going to fix that. They'll probably fix that this week, so who cares? Um, again, so that's sort of number one. Number one is Coinbase, either the debit card or the credit card. There's pros and cons of each. Um, that's your best option. Okay. So, if that's not available to you or you're not comfortable with Coinbase or for some reason you just don't like that option, your next best option is the Gemini credit card and pay it off with a Bitcoin balance. Either liquidate it to US dollars or, you know, whatever it is you got to do. Um, that's probably your best your second best option. Now, in the works right now are a couple different things, uh, which are bill pay. So, Strike, S T R I ke. Uh, Strike is something I don't talk about much. I'm a big fan of Strike, but River is just a little bit better. And River has River Links where I can send people free Bitcoin for, you know, make it super simple. They click a link, all that sort of stuff. And Strike does not have an equivalent to that. So, I do not recommend. Well, I I I absolutely recommend Stripe to people. But the reason I recommend River so much more is because uh it's so much easier to send Bitcoin with a uh River link and Stripe does not have Strike links. Although I'm going to try to see if Jack Mers will implement that feature because they have an amazing engineering team and I'm positive they could easily do that. They just haven't. Um so anyway, so and River is just more polished, a little bit easier, etc., etc. Okay. So, uh, River River is planning to implement a bill pay feature, but they haven't yet. But when that's online, you'll be able to pay your bills, uh, with a, uh, an account number, a routing number, you know, all the goodies that you would normally use for a traditional bank account. You will be able to do that on River sometime in the near future, although I don't know the timeline. On Strike, Str. Strike.me is their website. strke.me. Strike has a bill pay feature already. So Strike already has direct deposit with no fees. So you can deposit your paycheck on Strike and get it immediately in Bitcoin with no fees and everything. Uh and Strike already has bill pay. So you can get your money into Strike and out of Strike by having it direct deposited to Strike and then using the bill pay feature to pay your bill straight out of Strike that already exists. And again, if that is your greatest need and it was, you know, high on your priority list, then that makes Strike better than River. Uh, again, I just don't use Strike because I can't easily send people Bitcoin on Strike who do not have any type of Bitcoin account. And because a big part of what I do is send people Bitcoin who don't have any sort of Bitcoin account already. It's just much easier to do that on River because it guides you through the process of creating an account. Whereas Strike, it's not as straightforward. Um, so Strike has a bill pay feature and a direct deposit feature already. River is planning on implementing a uh a bill pay feature, but they haven't yet. Uh, Strike is also looking at their own credit card. Uh, that would work similar to the Coinbase card where you, you know, you spend Bitcoin throughout the year or sorry, throughout the month and then it automatically pays from your Bitcoin balance. And Strike also has uh Bitcoin lending, which means they are planning to set it up where if you want rather than paying your Bitcoin balance with your Bitcoin or from a fiat bank account, you can choose to pay it uh from a line of credit against your Bitcoin, which is pretty cool. I mean, I'm not saying I'd recommend that because the fees are like or the interest rates like 12%, which is, you know, super high. Uh, but you know, the fact that it's there and the fact that the interest rates are only going to come down uh is is pretty cool. So, if I had to stack rank it, I would say, okay, Coinbase is the best way to spend your Bitcoin. If I couldn't use Coinbase, I would use Gemini. I would use the co the Gemini Bitcoin credit card. And if I couldn't use that, um, then I would rig everything up with Strike. Um, and I would set Strike up. Basically, the way I would set it up is um I would use, you know, I don't know, I think Jack Morers uses a Chase Platinum Sapphire, some something. What is it that he's always talking about? Yeah, something like that. Chase Platinum Sapphire or something like whatever it is. Anyway, he mentions it now and then is what he uses. But anyway, if if I couldn't use either of those, Coinbase or Gemini for a payment card, then I would find the highest cash back uh credit card or debit card or whatever that I could find. Um, and I think Wells Fargo even has up to 2%. I think the card I have is like 1.5% cash back. Uh, but I think they have one for 2%. So, I'd just upgrade it to 2%. and then I would probably use that and then I would pay it off with Strike. Um, so first option is Coinbase, second best option is Gemini. Third best option is to probably use a traditional payment card uh and then pay it off with uh with Strike. Although, if I were in a position where I could not use Coinbase, I would probably do a fresh search of the internet to just see what other payment cards are out there that let you spend Bitcoin. Uh, for example, I could probably get comfortable uh spending Bitcoin with the uh uh with the Crypto.com credit or uh debit card. So, I I go look at that. And if I'm only pushing a little bit of Bitcoin every month uh to just make sure that the debit card keeps working, then I'm never going to have, you know, above a fourdigit balance on Crypto.com anyway. And so, I would do that. But again, I haven't had to cross that bridge because Coinbase has worked well for me for many years. And I already have a Gemini account, which means it's just a lot easier to use Gemini uh than to go set up a Crypto.com account. And again, I really don't like the fact that they're in Singapore and the fact that they have the CRO token, which inevitably I mean, anytime you have your own token, it's a recipe for disaster. Uh because again, it's just, you know, it's a junk token. It's just by definition a junk token. So that's your summary. Best way to spend Bitcoin is Coinbase. Second best is probably Gemini. Third best is probably a traditional credit card linked uh to Strike. Uh the the bill pay feature on Strike or the bill pay feature on River as soon as they roll out bill pay which I don't think they have yet. Maybe they have but I don't think they have yet. Um so when they get around to doing that uh and then again I would research. I do a some fresh research just to see if Crypto.com, if I could get comfortable with the Crypto.com uh paradigm or uh their debit card or anything like that. So, I hope all that helps. Uh bottom line is there's a lot of ways to spend Bitcoin and it's still very early in the Bitcoin ecosystem for spending. As we've talked about numerous times, when an asset becomes monetized like Bitcoin, it goes through store of value, then medium of exchange, then unit of account. unit of account is when stuff is actually priced in Bitcoin rather than US dollars, for example. So, Bitcoin is still early. It's well on its way as a store of value, but it is still early as a medium of exchange, which is a payment method. Uh because again, typically, you know, something only becomes a payment method after it's already well established as a store of value. So, Bitcoin is just solidly in, you know, stage one of adoption and it's in the early stage of stage two, which is medium of exchange. So, it's very very well sophisticated and everything in the store of value stage one. It's just relatively early in stage two as a medium of exchange, but that will get better over time. Every day that goes by, there will be more opportunities. Hopefully, Strike will roll out their own debit card or credit card. Uh hopefully River will as well eventually. Anyway, it all works. So, uh let me know if you have questions. Happy to help. And there are lots of ways to spend your Bitcoin. And it's easy to push uh Bitcoin from BitKey to any service you want to spend it on. So have a great day everyone.