Earning Bitcoin with Fold

As part of my continued use of apps that offer bitcoin rewards, I have decided to put together some data on earning bitcoin with The Fold App. Instead of earning bitcoin by spending money at online retailers like I am documenting in Earning Bitcoin with Lolli, I have decided to see how much I can earn by purchasing some gift cards instead. So far, the results have been pretty promising.

Before we fully dive into this study, please take a moment to read my disclaimer and disclosure. It goes into detail on how none of this is financial advice and that bitcoin is risky. It also covers how I generate revenue with the use of affiliate links and a single banner ad on each study.

Here’s what the ad looks like. In fact, I go into detail on exactly how much revenue this banner ad generates in my case study, Earning Bitcoin with A-Ads.

Now let’s get back to learning how to earn bitcoin with the Fold app.

What Is The Fold App?

Fold is an app that lets you purchase gift cards and earn bitcoin as a sort of cashback reward called “kickbacks”. You can pay with either a credit/debit card or the lightning network.You accrue satoshis each time you purchase a gift card or refer a new user and can request an on-chain withdrawal as soon as you meet the 50,000 sat withdrawal threshold. In my opinion, Fold has the potential to be the greatest onramp to get users their very first fraction of a bitcoin while also familiarizing the user with the term “satoshi” or “sat” right from the start.

The gift cards that you purchase are also transferable so you can gift digital gift cards to your friends and family.

Case Study Parameters

Since I am earning bitcoin with Fold, as opposed to just buying it, there isn’t the same downside fear of the price dropping. In my opinion, this reduced risk will help bring more new users into Bitcoin than any other tool in the Bitcoin space.

My strategy for purchasing gift cards is to only buy gift cards with companies that I would already spend money with anyway. For instance, I tend to eat Chipotle relatively often since I think that it’s a good meal for the price. Now I have no reason to use my credit/debit cards at the register anymore since I can buy a gift card from Fold, stack some sats in the process, and then use my gift card in the store. I also tend to order a good number of basic living necessities (like toothpaste, socks, etc.) on Amazon so now instead of paying with my credit card on Amazon, I buy a gift card, stack sats, and then use the gift card on Amazon.

Infographic: Earning Bitcoin With Fold

No case study would be complete without a nice infographic that shows all of the data that I have collected so far. Here’s all of the data that I have compiled for Fold and it is looking pretty promising.

Earning Bitcoin With Fold

Earning kickbacks are the primary means that users earn bitcoin with Fold. You have the option to pay with credit cards or pay with the Bitcoin lightning network. I don’t like to spend Bitcoin (yet) but since Fold offers some pretty substantial benefits for paying with lightning, I will look into some arbitrage opportunities as this study grows. I am also really excited about a service called Strike that allows you to send bitcoin via the lightning network without actually owning any bitcoin. Using such a service with Fold can increase your kickbacks while also adding liquidity to the lightning network.

All of the data for this study can be viewed in my Bitcoin Case Studies Spreadsheet.

Earning Bitcoin With Fold’s Referral Program

Since Fold is such an easy sell to your friends and family, it makes sense that they would have a referral program. When I first began, Fold offered a referral 20,000 sat bonus for both the referrer and the user being referred.

Since I joined with someone else’s referral code, I received 20,000 sats as soon as I joined. Sweet.

I was also able to refer 6 new users to Fold before they decided to change their referral program so that only the new user would receive the 20,000 bonus sats.

I think they probably had too many fake accounts being created just to get the 20k sats.

In April of 2020, Fold announced the release of The Fold Card which will enable you to stack sats with every swipe. When they made the announcement, their referral program shifted from receiving 20,000 sats to gaining priority access to the Fold card when it launches in Q4 of 2020. The top 1,000 referrers would gain early access to the card.

On October 9th, 2020, the referral competition ended and I was number 494 on the list so I am anxiously awaiting access to my Fold card. It will probably start off as a digital card that I can use for online purchases and Apple pay but I will be sure to update this study as soon as I know more.

I am hoping that they offer bitcoin rewards for referrers again since it would be nice to stack more sats for bringing new users into the Fold.

On-Chain Withdraws!

I am always skeptical of any service that claims to give away free bitcoin but the primary purpose of this project is to provide my readers with “simple data on how to make money with bitcoin” so I’ve compiled all of this data to see if they actually allow you to withdraw the sats that you’ve stacked.

Well, I am happy to say that I have successfully made multiple on-chain withdraws!

January Withdrawals: 151,000+ sats

As soon as I heard that Fold was starting to allow for on-chain withdraws, I requested my first withdraw of 151,000+ sats, and at the end of the week, it was sent directly to my on-chain address.

February Withdrawals: 0 sats

Since I didn’t make enough purchases in the month of February, I didn’t meet the 50,000 sat threshold. Needless to say, for the month of February, I didn’t make any on-chain withdrawals.

March Withdrawals: 136,000+ sats

After stacking more sats over the course of a couple of months, I initiated my second on-chain withdrawal for 136,000+ sats. Since Fold only processes transactions once a week, it took a few days to receive my sats but I now control the private keys for these sats. VERY cool.

April Withdrawals: 55,000+ sats

I only made a few purchases with Fold in the month of April but towards the end of March, I placed

May & June Withdrawals: 0 sats

With COVID-19 making its way across the globe, I cut my spending habits until I was able to figure out where my next paycheck was going to come from. My reduced spending resulted in a couple of months of reduced stacking with Fold.

For the months of May and June, I didn’t make many purchases and didn’t stack enough sats to qualify for an on-chain withdrawal.

July Withdrawals: 104,000+ sats

July brought another larger withdrawal since I made some larger purchases on Amazon. Another 100,000+ sats are now sitting in my wallet.

August Withdrawals: 77,000+ sats

August only brought a single withdraw of around 77,000 sats but every bit counts.

September Withdrawals: 50,000+ sats

Again, I only stacked about 50,000 sats since my August withdrawal but if I can make at least 1 withdrawal per month, I will stack at least 600,000 sats per year.

Total On-Chain Withdrawals: 634,000+ sats

After all of the withdrawals I have made so far, I am now in control of more than 634,000 sats on the bitcoin blockchain. That’s pretty impressive for spending money that I was already going to spend anyway. I don’t see my stacking increasing substantially before the end of the year but

Things To Consider

Nothing is perfect but I think Fold may have found one of the best business models in the bitcoin space. Here are some things to consider if you decide to use Fold.

Fold Creates Newcoiners

When a user begins their journey down the bitcoin rabbit hole, they probably Google a few things, get completely inundated with all sorts of information, get confused, and then potentially get discouraged or even quit their journey.

That’s not good for hyperbitcoinization.

Fold eliminates a good part of all of that frustration and pushes some of that more technical learning further down the rabbit hole where it belongs. Fold is the perfect transition from legacy banking to bitcoin. When you join the Fold, you get 20,000 sats just for signing up (with a referral code).

Newcoiners will download a wallet and learn what a seed phrase is when they are ready to make their first on-chain withdrawal. Until that point, it’s nothing but credit/debit cards, USD, and stacking small but meaningful amounts of sats. Beautiful.

Minimal KYC

Since Fold offers cashback on purchases and doesn’t sell bitcoin directly, they are required to collect minimal KYC info. They have my email address. They also have my credit card number. I am not doing anything illegal but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to preserve my privacy. It’s nice that I never had to send a full facial scan or pictures of the front and back of my ID to use their service.

It’s possible that in the future, you may need to provide more of your personal info to make on-chain withdrawals. For now, they have not requested any of my personal information.

The Fold Card: Spend Dollars. Stack Sats.

In early April of 2020, Fold announced the launch of their very own debit card that enables their users to stack sats with every purchase. According to Fold’s Twitter, this card enables you to “Spend dollars and earn bitcoin on every swipe.” The implications of this are HUGE if nocoiners and newcoiners can stack sats without having to change any of their daily spending habits. This card effectively turns every consumer into a passive bitcoin investor.

“The Fold Card: Spend Dollars and earn bitcoin on every swipe”

As soon as I receive my Fold card, I will use it as often as possible to add a new data point to this study for every purchase I make.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a way to earn bitcoin simply by purchasing gift cards and telling others about a very useful bitcoin service, Fold is the best option on the market. As they continue to grow, I think that their business model will continue to increase in popularity.

One of the advantages of Fold is that you can buy food with some of the gift cards which makes it easy to stack sats more often than you might think. They are also the only bitcoin rewards platform that offers any sort of bitcoin earnings with Amazon which has HUGE potential for onboarding new users.

Thank You

As always, thank you for taking the time to read about my experience earning bitcoin with Fold. I update these studies as often as I reasonably can depending on my work schedule. If you found any of this info insightful, please consider sharing it on social media.

If you would like to help me on my quest to work on bitcoin-related projects full-time, please consider joining Fold with my referral code. Not only does it help me to collect more data points for this study, it also helps to encourage me to keep doing what I am doing.

If you are feeling particularly generous, you can always send an LN tip my way with my Tippin.Me button below. Each and every tip I receive gives me yet another data-point for my study on earning bitcoin with Tippin.Me.