A crypto card lets you pay for things with coins you already hold, without selling them into a bank account first. The Amulets Card runs that through an app and a virtual card in your phone, and Denny Torres walked through the set-up in a video published on June 28, 2026. What stays with me is how little there is to it. An email, an app, an identity check, then a card in Google Wallet or Apple's wallet.
Two questions decide whether a card like this is worth using: what it costs, and who holds the money while it sits there. The walkthrough is clear on the second. On the first it prices one charge, the swap inside the app, and leaves the rest of the schedule for you to look up.
What the Amulets Card is for
A crypto card draws on a crypto balance instead of a bank account. With Amulets, you send crypto to an address the app gives you, the app holds the balance, and the card spends from it. Torres describes tapping his phone on the terminal at the supermarket to buy everyday things, the same way he would with any other card.
The route he compares it to is the usual one: send crypto to an exchange, sell it for reais, move the money into a current account, where the balance and every incoming transfer are visible to anyone with access to that account. If someone can see your current account, they can see your salary land and your rent leave. The card takes the conversion and the bank account out of that chain, and that privacy is what he is selling.
The plumbing is familiar. Crypto cards run on one of the big payment networks and are issued by a fintech or an exchange. The network sets rules the issuer has to follow, the issuer holds the money, and the merchant sees an ordinary card payment. Torres says the identity requirements at sign-up come from Visa rather than Amulets, which puts this card in that same arrangement.
So the card is not anonymous. It wants a government ID, an address and a phone number. What it can do is keep your spending off a bank statement, and for some people that is the whole point. Privacy from a bank statement and anonymity are different things, and this card offers only the first.
The everyday use is narrow. You hold a dollar-pegged balance, pay for groceries, fuel or a subscription, and top up again when it runs low. Nothing in the walkthrough treats the card as a savings product, and neither would I.
What you need before you start
An Android phone or an iPhone, since the card arrives as a virtual card inside the phone's wallet. An email address you can reach during sign-up, because two codes go to it in sequence, one to the inbox and one inside the app. A government identity document, an address and a phone number for the card registration. And crypto on a network the app supports.
He registered with a Paraguayan identity document and a Paraguayan phone number, since he was in the middle of moving to Paraguay, and he adds that Brazilian documents work too. The app decides which countries it accepts, so confirm yours before you send money across.
His first top-up was 15 USDT. That is how I would start with any new payment product: a small deposit teaches you how long a transfer takes and whether the balance appears, and the amount at risk is one you can leave sitting there if something goes wrong.
Expect a wait before the card works. Crypto you deposit before the card exists cannot be spent, as he points out after his first deposit. The identity check has to clear first, and until it does the money sits in the app doing nothing. None of this is exotic, but all of it has to be ready before you start, because that form sits between your deposit and a card you can actually use.
Creating the account step by step
The sign-up starts on the Amulets website and finishes in the app. Torres calls it one of the easiest crypto tools he has set up, a few clicks and the account is there, and this is the sequence he follows.
- Open the Amulets sign-up page and enter your name and email address.
- Ignore the first code that arrives by email and click Send to get the download link.
- Choose Android or iPhone and install the app. On Google Play it is listed as Amulets: Crypto Card & Wallet.
- Open the app and tap the last option on the screen, "I already have an account" ("Eu já tenho uma conta"), because your email is already registered from the website.
- Enter the same email again and type the second code, which arrives inside the app this time.
- Work through the setup pages. The account exists at the end of them.
Order is the part that catches people. Install the app first and start from a blank sign-up, and you end up with a second account instead of the one you began on the website. That is why the "I already have an account" option is there.
Loading crypto: networks, coins and the balance
The deposit screen asks for a network before anything else, and that choice is where a mistake costs real money. A coin sent on a different network from the one you picked may never arrive, and getting it back is not something you can count on. Copy the address the app shows, paste it into the exchange or wallet you are sending from, and match the network on both sides.
The app takes several networks, and Bitcoin was added recently, according to Torres. His own top-ups went over BNB Smart Chain, which he likes because it is cheap and fast. He keeps spending money in USDT and USDC, the dollar-pegged tokens usually called stablecoins, rather than in Bitcoin, and his reason is practical: he does not see the point of spending Bitcoin on day-to-day purchases.
That is a view about which asset to spend, and it leaves the investment question to you. A stablecoin is designed to hold a value of one dollar, and whether it does depends on the reserves behind it.
The two top-ups in his example, both on the same network:
| Coin | Amount | Network |
|---|---|---|
| USDT | 15 | BNB Smart Chain |
| USDC | 10.24386343 | BNB Smart Chain |
The balance read $25.24 after the second deposit landed, the 15 USDT plus the 10.24386343 USDC. The app keeps the two coins separate, and Torres says that is fine. When you pay, the card spends whatever balance is there, so there is no need to merge them.
His second deposit came from Binance over BNB Smart Chain. Sending from an exchange means the exchange handles the withdrawal, and you still have to match the network on the exchange's side to the one you chose in the app. Most lost deposits happen at that step, and it is worth slowing down for.
The identity check and the virtual card
Money in the app is not yet a working card. The card lives behind the Card tab, and the first thing there is a registration form: identity document, address, phone number. Torres says these are Visa's requirements, the normal arrangement when a crypto company issues a card on a payment network.
He filled the form with his Paraguayan details, accepted the terms and waited. Verification took about 15 to 20 minutes, and he passed the time refreshing the page to see whether the card was ready. When it was, the app produced a virtual card ending in 0171, a set of digits he found funny.
From there the card goes into a phone wallet. On Android that is Google Wallet: copy the card details, paste them in, and the card is there. On an iPhone the same job is done by Apple's wallet. He says he has used the card for a few days and that it works normally at terminals.
So your phone becomes your card. A dead battery, a lost handset or a wallet that will not open leaves you with no way to pay. Keep the phone locked, and know how you would get back into the wallet on a new device.
The one fee the walkthrough prices
One fee appears in the walkthrough, and it is the swap. The app has a button that converts one balance into another, and when Torres tried it he saw a charge he did not like. His advice is to skip the conversion unless it is really necessary. Leave USDT and USDC side by side and let the card draw on whichever balance it needs, or convert somewhere with a lower fee and send the result to the card.
I would add a habit to that. Before you convert anything inside an app, look at the amount you put in and the amount you get out, because that difference is the real cost, whatever the screen calls it. A small percentage is easy to wave away and adds up over a year of spending.
Nothing else in the walkthrough carries a price: no issuing fee, no monthly charge, no ATM limit, no conversion charge, no cashback. Read the app's fee schedule and card terms before you load money.
Crypto cards usually earn in a few places: a fee to issue the card, a monthly charge, a cost to top up, a margin on converting your balance into the currency the merchant charges in, and a fee plus a limit on ATM withdrawals. The conversion margin is often the largest and the least visible, since it shows up as an exchange rate instead of a line on a statement. None of that is specific to Amulets. It is how this kind of card is usually priced, and it is why the schedule deserves a read before the first top-up.
Where your money sits, and what privacy means here
Follow the money. Crypto leaves an exchange, arrives at an address the app supplied, and appears as a balance inside the app; the card spends that balance. At no point does the account holder hold a private key, the string of characters that controls a wallet and that nobody else should see.
That makes the set-up custodial: the provider holds the funds and you hold a claim on them. A self-custody wallet works the other way round. The balance sits at an address you control, and losing the key means losing the money, with no support desk to call. The card needs the provider in the middle, because a payment network cannot wait for you to sign a transaction at the till.
The trade is easy to state. You get a card that behaves like a card. You give up the guarantee that the money is yours to move at any moment, and you take on the risk that the provider freezes the account, changes its terms or runs into trouble. A demo where everything works will not show you that risk.
Then the privacy claim. The card wants an identity document, an address and a phone number, and Torres says Visa sets those checks. The issuer knows who you are, the network knows a card was used, and the merchant sees a normal payment. What your bank does not see is the crypto, because the bank is not in the chain at all.
That is the honest version of the pitch: privacy from the bank statement and from the conversion route, not anonymity. A card with a Visa identity check cannot give you spending that is untraceable, whatever the funding side looks like.
Tax is the part that catches people. In many countries, spending crypto counts as a taxable sale, even when the coin is a stablecoin built to hold a dollar. The card does not remove that step. Keep a record of what you loaded, what it cost you and what you spent, because rebuilding it later from an app and an exchange statement is painful.
The risks I would weigh
Access comes first. Verification can be refused, and an account can be restricted after money is already inside. With a custodial balance, sorting that out means dealing with support while your funds sit there. Torres's check cleared in 15 to 20 minutes, which is one case and not a promise about yours.
The stablecoin is the second. USDT and USDC aim to hold a dollar and have held it closely for long stretches, but the peg depends on the issuer's reserves and on people trusting them. A depeg would hit a spending balance directly. That is a property of stablecoins, not of this card.
Volatility arrives if you load Bitcoin. The app accepts it now, and a Bitcoin balance can move a long way between top-up and payment. Torres avoids the issue by spending stablecoins, and I would treat that as the simpler path for everyday money.
The track record is short. A card used for a few days at supermarket terminals has worked in a few situations. That says little about a declined payment at a busy till, a merchant that blocks it, or a trip where the currency changes. I would rather find that out on a small first payment than at a full trolley.
Then there is what the privacy argument assumes: that what you want to keep from other people is the link between your crypto and your bank account. If your concern is that a company, a card network and a government know what you spend, the identity check means the card fails at the first screen. Which of those you care about decides whether the card is worth it.
One more, easy to forget: a card tied to a phone is a payment method tied to a device. Backups, a screen lock and a plan for a lost handset are part of using it, not optional extras.
What to check before you load the card
Read the fee schedule first. Look for the issuing fee, any monthly charge, the conversion margin when you spend in a currency other than your balance, and the ATM fee and limit. A card can look free and still cost money every time you pay in another currency.
Confirm that your country's documents are accepted, and check the minimum and maximum top-up and the list of supported networks inside the app before you send anything. Then make one small deposit and watch it arrive. If something goes wrong, you want it to happen with $15 rather than a month of spending.
Treat the balance as money held by someone else. Load what you plan to spend over the next few weeks, not your savings, and move anything larger back to a wallet you control. For everyday spending the claim is fine. Once the balance grows past a few weeks of groceries, I would start asking how quickly the money could be moved out.
Keep the tax records as you go. A note of the date, the coin, the amount and the price at each top-up turns a tedious form into a ten-minute job and tells you what your spending actually cost.
Before you type your email into a sign-up page, check the address in the browser. Lookalike sites are a common way to lose crypto, and the habit costs a few seconds. The same goes for the deposit address: copy it from the app, not from a message, and check the first and last characters after pasting.
The money you load is a claim on a company, not a key in your pocket. Send $15 first and see what a month of spending actually costs.
