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Avon launches Bitcoin-backed Visa card

Friday, May 1, 2026 · from 4 podcasts, 8 episodes
4 SOURCESBitcoin 2026TFTCUngovernable MisfitsSimon Dixon Hard Talk
  • Avon’s new Bitcoin-backed Visa card offers 7.99% APR fixed for 10 years, using BTC as low-risk collateral.
  • Block auto-enrolls 800K merchants, hides Bitcoin’s complexity to push daily use.
  • Lightspark’s Grid links Bitcoin stablecoins to 175M Visa merchants globally.

Avon isn’t waiting for macroeconomic shifts. CEO Sadi Khan has launched a Bitcoin-backed Visa credit card offering 10-year fixed rates starting at 7.99% APR, with loan-to-value ratios up to 70%. The product treats Bitcoin as safer than real estate - liquidatable in minutes, even on weekends - cutting default risk and enabling longer loan durations. Khan’s goal: democratize the 'Buy, Borrow, Die' strategy from billionaires to the 99%.

"Bitcoin can be liquidated in minutes, even on a weekend."

- Sadi Khan, TFTC

Block is matching this push with infrastructure. Miles Suter revealed that over 800,000 Square merchants are now auto-enrolled to accept Bitcoin, removing technical friction. A physical toggle on payment terminals lets customers choose currency at point-of-sale, while 'Dollars on Lightning' lets users spend via Lightning without triggering capital gains. Cash App’s 60 million users can now auto-convert P2P payments into Bitcoin at zero cost.

David Marcus’s Lightspark has gone further: its Grid Global Account is now a principal Visa member, enabling spending at 175 million merchants across 33 countries. The account links Bitcoin, stablecoins, and domestic rails like Brazil’s Pix. Marcus calls it the 'Gmail for money' - a neutral, multi-chain layer where platforms capture yield, FX spreads, and interchange fees instead of losing them to legacy banks.

"We're building the Gmail for money - Bitcoin as the settlement layer."

- David Marcus, Bitcoin 2026

The plumbing is maturing. LNbits now supports 20 backends - from LND to Spark - and offers plug-and-play hardware like the LNbits Box to remove command-line hurdles. Black Coffee admits even he uses Phoenix for channel management: 'I don’t want to spend three hours a week on ops.' Meanwhile, Nunchuk’s new CLI lets AI agents transact within human-enforced spending policies, a step toward automated, bounded financial agents.

Jack Mallers is merging Strike with Tether’s mining arm to create a vertically integrated Bitcoin company - mining, payments, and volatility-proof loans under one roof. Users can now borrow against BTC without liquidation risk, backed by a $2.1B credit facility. Tether’s 5% of global hash power becomes the physical backbone of this new financial layer.

Bitcoin is no longer just a store of value. It’s becoming a functional, global cash system - funded by miners, secured by self-custody, and spent like dollars.

ProtocolPaymentsLightningStablecoinsMining
David MarcusLightsparkMicroStrategySquareStrikeTetherVisaBitcoinCash AppLNbitsLNDNunchukPhoenixSpark

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Bitcoin 2026
Bitcoin 2026

Bitcoin 2026

Living on Bitcoin | Miles Suter, Block • Apr 30

  • Block’s company mission is to make Bitcoin everyday money, a goal Miles Suter says requires Bitcoin to function as peer-to-peer electronic cash to retain its transformational quality of permissionless transactions.
  • Block launched Square Bitcoin payments nationwide by November after a year-end promise, with over 800,000 payments-enabled businesses now and a new one added every 8 seconds.
  • Block’s Bitcoin map shows Cash App’s nearly 60 million monthly active users where to find Bitcoin-enabled merchants, and merchants on the map see payment counts nearly 500% higher than those not listed.
  • Block introduced auto-enrollment for Bitcoin payments, a merchant-facing toggle, and a 5% Bitcoin rebate through Cash App for the rest of the year, alongside a 'dollars on Lightning' feature to settle payments without a taxable event.
  • Block is developing tap-to-pay for Bitcoin built on an open standard, compatible with wallets like Wallet of Satoshi and Phoenix, and experimenting with proximity payments that don't require NFC.
  • Cash App now allows users to auto-convert a percentage of incoming peer-to-peer payments into Bitcoin with zero fees, expanding existing zero-fee options for direct deposit conversion, card roundups, and scheduled auto-invest.
  • Block recently introduced free Bitcoin buys for any amount over $2,000 on Cash App and is working on outbound ACH functionality as a key part of living on a Bitcoin standard.
  • Block’s new Bitkey hardware wallet includes a screen for a more intuitive self-custody experience, and the company envisions seamless ecosystem connectivity where a paycheck converts in Cash App and auto-withdraws to self-custody.
  • Block invests in open-source Bitcoin development through Spiral and decentralizes mining through Proto's RIG initiative, focusing on durable, repairable hardware to prevent network centralization.
  • Block will roll out a public Bitcoin roadmap across Square, Cash App, Bitkey, and Proto to build in public and allow community influence on development priorities.
Also from this episode: (2)

Custody (1)

  • Block launched a proof of reserves for Bitcoin custodied across Cash App, Square, and Block, claiming to be the only company with both public financial audits and on-chain verification.

AI & Tech (1)

  • Suter argues the AI revolution will integrate with Bitcoin as open systems choose open money, and Block is building AI like Square’s Manager Bot and Cash App’s Money Bot to proactively manage financial life with Bitcoin.
PaymentsAdoptionBTC MarketsLightning

The Bitcoin Company | Jack Mallers, Strike • Apr 30

  • Jack Mallers says Strike is a global Bitcoin bank selling financial services, offering fee-free Bitcoin acquisition and withdrawal, direct deposit, bill payments, and Bitcoin-backed loans/credit lines.
  • Mallers says Strike lending products are the most successful he has launched in his 14-year Bitcoin career, finding product-market fit by providing liquidity without selling Bitcoin.
  • Strike expanded its Bitcoin-backed loans and lines of credit across most of the United States and parts of the European Union, while lowering its lowest pricing tier to 7.49%.
  • Mallers announced Strike will publish quarterly lending proof-of-reserves with external auditors for transparency, acknowledging customers need trust when collateral cannot be withdrawn.
  • Strike partnered with Tether to offer segregated address collateral for large loans, enabling clients to verify their Bitcoin collateral directly on-chain without rehypothecation.
  • Mallers announced 'volatility-proof loans' as a top customer request, a product where Bitcoin collateral is protected from liquidation despite market price drops.
  • Tether provided Strike with a $2.1 billion credit facility to finance growth in Bitcoin-backed credit products, aiming to meet any demand for loans or lines of credit.
  • Mallers's co-founders proposed merging Strike and Tether's mining business, Electron, into 21.co, aiming to create a company with both financial distribution and Bitcoin production.
  • Mallers positions crypto exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and Robinhood as high-operating-income but low-Bitcoin-conviction businesses, citing Coinbase's $10 billion fiat versus $1 billion Bitcoin balance sheet.
  • Mallers cites Jim Chanos's analysis showing Robinhood customers lost 5% in February versus a 0.9% S&P 500 drop, framing it as evidence Robinhood promotes hyper-speculation not conviction.
  • Electron, Tether's mining business, has 50 exahash of capacity representing roughly 5% of the Bitcoin network, built for both economic profit and philosophical network protection.
Also from this episode: (3)

BTC Markets (3)

  • Mallers positions Bitcoin treasury companies like MicroStrategy and Metaplanet as high-conviction but low-operating-income businesses, focused on capital markets not product-building.
  • Mallers defines his ideal Bitcoin company as high-conviction and high-operating-income, with a financial services arm, physical Bitcoin infrastructure, capital markets leverage, and strategic M&A.
  • 21.co holds 43,514 Bitcoin, the second-largest corporate treasury, but Mallers insists he wants to build beyond capital markets into products that change users' lives.
BTC MarketsAdoptionMiningStablecoins

The Grid Global Account | David Marcus, Lightspark • Apr 30

  • David Marcus notes that the daily global financial system processes 10 billion transactions worth approximately $5.5 trillion, yet lacks a unified global account akin to Gmail for email.
  • Marcus cites recent regulatory clarity, including the United States' Genius Act and Europe's MiCA, as enabling platforms to use digital assets like stablecoins without fear of prosecution.
  • Marcus presents Lightspark's Grid Global Account, a product launched on Spark, a layer built on Bitcoin that he argues is also the best network for stablecoins running on Bitcoin.
  • Marcus announces Lightspark is becoming a principal member of the Visa network. The partnership will enable users to spend at 175 million merchants globally, initially in 33 countries and expanding to 100 by year's end.
  • The Grid Global Account integrates with 65 countries' domestic real-time payment systems, with plans to expand to 75. It allows instant conversion and transfer to local bank accounts, even off-hours.
  • Marcus explains the account is interoperable across blockchains; a dollar balance can move to USDC on Solana or USDT on Optimism. It also supports buying and selling Bitcoin natively from the same address.
  • Marcus frames the product as a revenue source for platforms, offering stablecoin yield, FX and card interchange fees, and Bitcoin transaction revenue, rather than being a cost center.
  • Marcus demonstrates AI agent delegation using an example wallet called Bread. An agent named 'M' can execute tasks like buying coffee or sending $500 to a contact in Brazil via Pix, with user-controlled spending limits.
  • Marcus argues building on Bitcoin, while harder, ensures neutrality and prevents becoming a tenant on a proprietary network. He cites collaboration with firms like Block and River on this open network.
BankingStablecoinsAgentsBTC MarketsRegulation
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

Marty Bent

#741: Solving The Wrench Attack with Max Guise • Apr 29

  • Max Guise says Block operates with an 'everyday matters' urgency, leveraging AI tools and connecting its ecosystem to make Bitcoin secure, accessible, and usable as everyday money.
  • Guise argues the 3% network fee on fiat payments consumes 20-30% of a typical seller's profits, creating a practical business incentive for merchants to adopt Bitcoin payments via Square.
  • BitKey implemented Chain Code Delegation, proposed as BIP89, to allow users to benefit from a third key held by Block's servers without the privacy trade-off of the server knowing wallet balances and history.
  • To counter wrench attacks, BitKey is designing a vault system using time locks enforced by hardware and servers, requiring biometric checks and a configurable delay before funds can move, with an optional ejection destination.
  • Marty Bent defends Bitcoin's role as peer-to-peer cash against the dominant digital gold narrative, appreciating Block's focus on making it everyday money.
Also from this episode: (5)

Custody (5)

  • Max Guise states BitKey's design started by solving the hardest problems in self-custody, focusing first on recovery and safety to lower entry barriers for new users who found traditional setup overly technical.
  • BitKey aims to eliminate seed phrases, using a collaborative custody system with a hardware wallet, mobile app, and Block's servers. This addresses the vulnerability of portable seed phrases in potential wrench attacks.
  • The new BitKey hardware adds on-device verification with a screen, allowing users to directly confirm transaction details, receive addresses, and critical account security changes like email and SMS updates.
  • BitKey's onboarding process takes minutes from unboxing to first transaction, a core design goal to make the door into self-custody easy and attract users gifting devices to others.
  • The team handles extensive edge cases like losing both phone and hardware, Block going out of business, or interrupted onboarding flows, absorbing complexity so customers don't have to.
CustodyAdoptionPrivacy

#740: Hard Asset Lending For The 99% with Sadi Khan • Apr 27

  • Sadi Khan founded Avon to reduce the cost of capital for consumers by focusing on asset-backed lending. The mission is to drive down the cost of the transaction through technology.
  • Avon's home equity card has originated over $4 billion in lines and saved consumers over $300 million in interest. Khan says it drove the largest change in credit card cost of capital in U.S. history.
  • Sadi Khan believes the value proposition of Bitcoin is strongest against hyperinflationary currencies, not the USD. His view stems from growing up in Bangladesh and Zambia.
  • Avon is launching a Bitcoin-backed Visa credit card. It offers a 10-year fixed rate loan with an APR as low as 7.99%, loan-to-value ratios up to 70%, and a five-year interest-only period.
  • The Bitcoin collateral is custodied by BitGo with no rehypothecation. Avon conducts KYC, ability-to-pay checks, and a soft credit pull for underwriting.
  • Khan argues Bitcoin is structurally the lowest-risk asset to lend against, leading him to predict its backed product will eventually be Avon's cheapest. He views lending risk as a function of the risk-free rate, transaction cost, and asset risk.
  • Avon is testing a fast cash-out mortgage refinance product. Khan's long-term vision includes lending against stocks and other assets to democratize access currently available only to the wealthy.
Also from this episode: (4)

BTC Markets (1)

  • Avon waited for regulatory clarity on Bitcoin's status as a commodity before launching. The company avoids regulatory risk and built compliance infrastructure via its complex home equity product first.

Business (1)

  • Sadi Khan says Avon employs only 88 full-time employees but generates high revenue per employee. He hires for uncompromising intelligence, hard work, and mission alignment.

AI & Tech (1)

  • Khan views LLMs as high-recall, low-precision tools. Avon uses them internally with heavy guardrails to achieve 95% precision in agent feedback systems, boosting human agent quality.

Enterprise (1)

  • Avon's initial advantage in home equity was origination efficiency, not superior risk models. The company reduced HELOC origination time from weeks to 15 minutes and cut costs by an order of magnitude.
MacroBankingBTC MarketsAI Infrastructure
Ungovernable Misfits
Ungovernable Misfits

Coffee Date with LNbits | FREEDOM TECH FRIDAY 38 • Apr 27

  • Black Coffee describes LNbits as an open platform akin to WordPress for a Lightning node, with a core user base of merchants, developers, and individuals running it for personal or family use.
  • The LNbits Box is a dedicated hardware product running NixOS that offers plug-and-play setup with integrated funding sources like Spark, Phoenix, or Arc, a web-based admin panel, and encrypted backup systems.
  • Black Coffee argues the self-custody narrative in Bitcoin is often a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy, advocating for pragmatic trade-offs like using Spark or Phoenix which offer usability despite not being perfectly trust-minimized.
  • LNbits supports over twenty funding sources including Core Lightning, LND, Phoenix, Spark, and the upcoming Arc, and users can switch between them at any time within the interface.
  • The platform's TunnelMeOut extension provides a paid reverse proxy service starting at 100 sats per day, granting Clearnet access to instances running on home servers without requiring manual VPS setup.
  • Major LNbits extensions include a point-of-sale system with inventory management, a webshop plugin, Nostr integrations for zaps and Lightning addresses, and channel management tools for CLN and LND backends.
  • Black Coffee says LNbits is designed for LLM-assisted 'vibe coding', providing comprehensive API documentation and an OpenAPI spec to enable rapid development of custom Lightning applications.
  • Black Coffee identifies awareness as LNbits's primary growth challenge, noting the project's broad functionality makes it harder to market than single-purpose tools.
Also from this episode: (2)

AI & Tech (1)

  • LNbits is a self-hosted, MIT-licensed software layer that adds an API and UI to a Lightning funding source, enabling extended functionality beyond a basic wallet.

Business (1)

  • LNbits offers a commercial SaaS product at mylnbits.com, allowing users to spin up hosted instances, and extensions can be monetized through one-time payments, subscriptions, or revenue-sharing models like a point-of-sale kickback.
BTC MarketsAdoptionPaymentsEnterprise

The Bitcoin Brief Goes LIVE | THE BITCOIN BRIEF 79 • Apr 24

  • Foundation Devices' new Passport Prime device offers significantly easier onboarding; Max reports concierge calls now take 30 minutes, half the time required for the older Passport Core device.
  • Roman Storm's legal team filed a Rule 29 motion to dismiss his conviction for operating an unlicensed money service business, arguing the evidence does not legally support the verdict.
  • The defense in the Roman Storm case highlighted that illicit funds constituted a maximum of 15% of Tornado Cash's total transaction volume over the charge period, a critical figure for the prosecution's argument.
  • BIP 361 proposes a three-phase soft fork to address quantum computing risks, aiming to secure Bitcoin against potential attacks that could exploit public keys.
  • The BIP 361 proposal notes that 34% of all existing Bitcoin has its public key exposed on the blockchain, making those funds theoretically vulnerable to sufficiently powerful quantum computers.
  • Academic roadmaps suggest cryptographically relevant quantum computers could emerge as early as 2027-2030, intensifying concerns about Bitcoin's long-term security.
  • Q expresses concern that BIP 361's forced migration or loss of funds contradicts Bitcoin's core ethos of permanent self-custody and could lead users to make mistakes.
  • A hacker stole 50.903 Bitcoin, valued at $3.9 million, from Bitcoin Depot's wallets by compromising credentials for digital asset settlement accounts.
  • Nunchuck released CLI and agent skills tools, enabling AI agents to safely operate Bitcoin wallets within multi-signature and miniscript setups, ensuring user control and policy-based spending limits.
  • Max and Q note reports of Bitcoin being used for international trade with Iran and by Russia to circumvent sanctions, highlighting its utility beyond speculation as global uncertainty rises.
Also from this episode: (3)

Safety (2)

  • Early Passport Prime adopters identified various edge cases, particularly regarding two-factor authentication (2FA) QR code compatibility, as different online services implement the TOTP/HOTP standard with slight variations.
  • Bitcoin Depot previously disclosed a data breach in mid-2025 that affected over 26,000 individuals' personal information, including names, phone numbers, and driving license numbers.

Custody (1)

  • A fake Ledger app on the Apple App Store drained $9.5 million in crypto from dozens of victims over a week-long phishing campaign, with one victim losing 5.9 Bitcoin.
ProtocolCustodyPrivacyAgents
Simon Dixon Hard Talk
Simon Dixon Hard Talk

How The Banking System Turned YOU into a DEBT SLAVE | Simon Dixon on Simply Bitcoin (19 April 2026) • Apr 24

  • Simon Dixon defines the Financial Industrial Complex (FIC) as a transnational governance structure that has captured Western governments, co-opted sovereign wealth funds, and cooperates with centralized governments like China's CCP.
  • At its base, the FIC is commercial banks that create fiat currency through loan issuance. Their primary goal is to turn individuals into collateralized debt obligations via mortgages, credit cards, and student loans, creating a cycle of debt slavery.
  • The FIC's capital control cycle begins with venture capital, moves to private equity and credit, and culminates in taking companies public. Once public, firms are loaded with corporate debt and controlled by index funds, investment banks, and the bond market.
  • The FIC manages trillions through insurance, pensions, and endowments to dictate capital flow via asset management. Central banks socialize losses and privatize gains, while lobbies rent Congress to direct money printing into FIC-owned corporate entities.
  • Dixon argues the military-industrial complex creates wars to ensure the debt-based Ponzi scheme continually rolls over. Deep state intelligence agencies bribe the judicial branch and install board seats in public companies to control all aspects of government and corporate life.
  • The petrodollar system, established after King Faisal's assassination, required oil purchases in dollars to be recycled into US Treasuries, rolling over the debt Ponzi scheme. Trump's first term broke it by making America an energy exporter, competing with the Middle East.
  • Dixon discovered Bitcoin in 2011 at $3, seeing it as an exit from the system. He later observed the sector getting co-opted as companies like Coinbase went public, ETFs like BlackRock's launched, and people borrowed against Bitcoin, giving Wall Street more power.
  • The winning strategy is to boycott the FIC by opting out: hold Bitcoin in self-custody to boycott custodians and ETFs, avoid borrowing against it to boycott banks, and build parallel local systems and supply chains.
  • Dixon believes Bitcoin will not fix the world but will create a new cycle of elites. A minority maintaining the Bitcoin ethos can achieve sovereignty, while most will hold it in custody, further empowering the FIC.
  • For individuals, Dixon advises maximizing the arbitrage between income and expenses to buy more Bitcoin monthly for at least 10 years. He personally defaulted on £250k of debt to buy Bitcoin, later negotiating a settlement after accumulating wealth.
Also from this episode: (5)

Politics (5)

  • The FIC executes regime changes to transition between empires, deconstructing the pro-dollar system to move towards multipolarity. This involves breaking the Japan carry trade, Eurodollar system, and petrodollar through managed events like tariffs and the Epstein files release.
  • Dixon claims Trump's 2026 meeting with Xi Jinping will mark the new world order. The Strait of Hormuz closure reprices 50 commodities, benefiting nationalized oil in Iran and Russia, China's manufacturing base, and private oil corps like Chevron and Exxon.
  • Dixon states Trump's primary funders were Elon Musk (Technical Industrial Complex), the Mellon banking family (FIC), and Miriam Adelson connected to Israel (Military-Industrial Complex). His policies delivered stimulus to all three complexes while inflation and debt burdens fell on the public.
  • Governments captured by the FIC serve three functions: a piggy bank to funnel money to corporate sectors, a mechanism to dampen inflation via taxation, and a battering ram creating left/right narratives to make votes feel consequential.
  • Historical empire transitions followed a pattern: the Dutch East India Company model was taken over by the British, then the American Federal Reserve system after World Wars. Each transition involved rug pulls, gold confiscation, and rewriting history.
MacroBankingBTC MarketsCustodyAdoption

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