VISA has announced that it terminates all cards issued by WaveCrest, a debit card issuer used by many Bitcoin debit card companies. Currently they are Bitwala, Cryptopay, Wirex and TenX.

The VISA prepaid cards issued by these companies to all their users just died all of a sudden. Twitter is full of disgruntled card users who can’t spend their Bitcoin via the cards anymore, and companies try to come up with comforting responses.

The news are all full of it, and not much is clear so far, but one thing is certain: small players will get weeded out, other companies will find other partners to issue cards (e.g. Bitpay is already on it). Then, attacks like these will repeat. This is part of the Bankers’ war on Bitcoin (timed together with a massive Ripple pump), so get used to that.

If you’ve been using a prepaid cryptocurrency card that got affected, we are sorry for your situation. Hopefully the companies will find a way to make it up to the users.

If you were just going to order a prepaid cryptocurrency card card or wanted to cash out or spend your bitcoin, we have a couple of easy workarounds for you below.

Here’s what you can do to bypass the VISA ban on crypto cards:

Bitcoin debit card comparison on our site and sign up for a Head over to theon our site and sign up for a MasterCard card. Just look for “MasterCard” in the second table column. Start using LocalBitcoins more, to use Bitcoin as intended – as a “peer to peer electronic cash system”. At LocalBitcoins you can get matched with local people willing to pay cash for your coin, which is a great way to sell some coin off the grid. A lot of other local payment methods are supported too and we expect the demand for peer to peer exchange and more decentralization.

Surely the situation will develop somehow in the nearest future. We will keep watching it and providing actionable advice as always, so sign up to the mailing list if you haven’t yet: