Neo · · 24 min
The XPlace Card Borrows Against Your Portfolio Instead of Selling It
With 
Artem Ponomarev
Key takeaways
Artem Ponomarev says a holder selling $100,000 of Bitcoin in the Netherlands faces up to 37% capital gains tax, the cost XPlace is built to avoid.
XPlace targets people with $25k to $10M in assets, a group he says neither DeFi lending nor private banks serve well.
The card has a cash mode and a borrow mode, and XPlace plans to accept tokenized stocks as collateral soon.
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Summary
Artem Ponomarev pitches XPlace as an onchain credit card that lets crypto holders borrow against their portfolio instead of selling it.
Artem Ponomarev, founder of XPlace, says crypto holders lose a lot when they sell to spend. If you hold $100,000 of Bitcoin in the Netherlands and sell it, he says, you face up to 37% capital gains tax. XPlace is an onchain credit card that lets users borrow against their assets so they can spend without liquidating them.
Borrowing like the wealthy
Artem Ponomarev argues that wealthy people do not sell assets to cover their costs. Instead they borrow against them to make large purchases or to spend day to day. He came to the idea after working in fintech and crypto VC in London and then building a microfinance and credit company in Latin America, Central America and Mexico.
He says people with 10,000,000 or more in assets can get a loan on good terms from JPMorgan or another large private bank. Between 25k and 10,000,000, he says, there is no access to loans against assets. He calls DeFi lending too complex for retail users because of variable rates, health factors and liquidations.
“If you are to have a prepaid card, right, that gets you, let's say, 100 options and one of the option is depositing crypto, and then when you deposit, it instantly sells your crypto. I don't think it's the crypto card. In my opinion, it's just a prepaid card with the crypto as an on ramp option.”
Artem PonomarevTwo modes on one card
In cash mode, deposited stablecoins such as USDC fund the card one to one. In borrow mode, the card borrows USDC against collateral like BTC at the moment of purchase, so the user does not have to borrow manually. Artem Ponomarev says most users want this to run on autopilot. XPlace starts with users who hold 25k plus onchain and uses cash mode as an acquisition tool before introducing borrow mode.
He says users who make a first borrow purchase come back for more, and some have told the concierge it is "insane that it worked."
Tiers and perks
The XPlace Basic tier pays 0.5 cashback on spend. Gold, for people spending 10k to 25k per month, pays 2% cashback on borrow mode purchases, and Platinum pays 4% on borrow mode with 0% fees. Benefits include Rise chauffeur service, Sixt car rental and Uber.
Not just a prepaid card
Artem Ponomarev says most cards that take crypto instantly sell it on deposit, which in his view makes them prepaid cards with a crypto on-ramp, not crypto cards. Next, XPlace plans to accept tokenized stocks as collateral, so deposited assets become collateral once they arrive.
Artem Ponomarev is betting that the borrowing private banks offer the very wealthy can work for onchain holders with much smaller portfolios. Whether it reaches beyond crypto holders depends on his plan to add tokenized stocks as collateral.
Camino, AmEx, XPlace, and Rise come up most.
- People
- Artem Ponomarev
- Drew Rogers
- Zach Fowler
- Companies
- Camino
- AmEx
- XPlace
- Rise
- Sixt
- Uber
- Coinbase
- Fidelity
- Invesco
- JPMorgan
- Morpho Labs
- Dfns
- Aave DAO
- Dakota
- Jupiter DAO
- State Street
