Sure, you can use your checking account, but if my credit card is going to restrict my usage and I'm going to be hassled into circumventing it, then why even have it?
I actually have a Well Fargo credit card, I'll be keeping an close eye on these restrictions.
Except that it doesn't because people aren't buying $10,000+ in gift cards on the hope that they will increase in value and then defaulting on their CC payments because said gift cards crashed.
When trying to solve a problem you have to focus on the actual problem at hand, not philosophical musings.
Thinking about it that way, I'm surprised there isn't some kind of limits on gift card buying. (Or maybe there is, and I haven't read my agreement well enough.)
It's much harder for a cryptocurrency exchange to reverse a transaction.
No one thinks a $100 Best Buy card will be worth more than $100 in the future, so people don't load up on them looking to make a buck.
In fact, you know it will be worth less!
Buy enough of those and your bank is likely to shut you down. FlyerTalk is full of threads about this. There used to be a number of easy ways to buy Visa gift cards and then cash them out to your bank account. You could send a couple thousand bucks in a circle earning points off each purchase.
There is only one place I know of where you can buy cash like gift cards in significant amounts, and many cc companies do post it as a cash advance (with the associated interest and fees). Everywhere else that you can buy visa/mc/amex gift cards the denomination is usually maxed at $500 and the store won't let you do too much, but there is a healthy cottage industry leveraging that (both legit and fraudulent).
In-game currency is really just store credit. It cannot be easily converted to cash and is thus not really considered a loan.
Selling either in-game currency (where possible) or store gift cards usually requires giving up as much as 20% of the value and thus isn't seen as a viable option.
CC companies don't want you to view them as a cash funding source, they want to be directly between the customer and the store not the customer and his/her cash. Especially cards with high "cash back" returns.
When you buy a $10,000 TV on a credit card, and can't make your payments, you're an idiot. There are a lot of idiots, but very few of them will do impulse purchases like that - because they understand that next month, they'll have to pay for it.
When you invest $10,000 of money that you pulled from a credit card... People feel completely different about that. If you have confidence in your investment, why not borrow money to fund it? You'll make that money back, and pay the debt off! If you don't have confidence in your investment, you wouldn't be investing anyways, with your own dollars, or borrowed ones.
Investing self-selects people who are (unreasonably) confident in the return rate on their investments. This is why you can't buy stocks or bitcoin on a credit card, but you can buy Magic: The Gathering cards.
Your credit card always has restricted usage. You probably can't use it for gambling, buying stocks, or to pay for a call girl either. If you have an American Express you can't use it for internet porn or to buy your LuLaRoe "inventory."
When you say “why even have it”, the answer to your rhetorical question is “it’s still a useful, and some might say necessary, financial tool”.
Disclaimer: I work in risk management, but not at Wells.
This is more similar to buying pre-paid credit cards or a money order with a credit card. It has been 5 years since I worked retail, however most places didn't allow that. Debit cars were fine because they were cash backed, and the bank (and everyone else involved) had a bit less fraud and things to deal with.
These sorts of restrictions are nothing new. Though this restriction might be limited to Wells Fargo right now, I'd not be surprised if this becomes standard much like the examples I listed above.
No, because there's this thing called "context", which is notthe same in those situations.
...those aren't money.
Last winter whoever held the information of 1BTC held the equivalent to 20,000 real tangible USD’s that they could take to the bank, exchange for food, etc. Today that same kind of information isn’t as valuable in the marketplace, but it’s still as “real” as anything once we get past the misconception that all things real must exist in one physical form.
TLDR; Is it real? Absolutely. Is it valuable? Right now it is.
If you lock a nugget of gold away for 5000 years in an unbreachable time capsule, it will still be a pliable and lustrous metal when you dig up, if you do the same thing with a wallet private key, you can't even be sure if the token's network exists much less all the infrastructure that it depends on to even exist.
If you're able to ascertain a wallet private key 5,000 years from now, it'll still be as 'real' as it is at this moment. Just maybe not as useful/functional or valuable.
Well... unless in 5,000 years there is a crypto museum out there willing to pay significant sums for anyone who can produce a valid private key for an address that once had a transaction on the blockchain.