Fold's Bitcoin Card Bets on Beating Miles as Its Stock Crashes and Burns

Fold's Q4 revenue inched up a humble 8% to $9 million, propped up by 2,000 fresh degens and a new arsenal of Bitcoin-reward products. The main attraction is the Fold Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card—a Visa- and Stripe-powered monster that dispenses cash-back and sats, because who needs fiat when you can get digital gold?

CEO Will Reeves pitched investors on a future where Bitcoin rewards dethrone airline miles as America's go-to loyalty scheme. "We need to scale to millions of cardholders and lock down risk and fraud controls before we can really open the floodgates," he stated, acknowledging the existing scrum of competitors like Coinbase and Gemini already elbowing for space in the BTC-card arena.

Despite the hopium, transaction volume actually dipped 3% year-over-year to $215 million, and the firm bled a $6 million operating loss, adding to a spectacular $69.6 million net loss for 2025. Reeves, ever the optimist, countered that Fold still hit its first-year public-company goals, onboarding customers and supposedly laying the foundation for a "Bitcoin-native" financial system—whatever that means before the scaling kicks in.

New products include Fold for Business, letting companies pay payroll and bonuses in BTC. One flagship partner, Steak 'n Shake, now accepts Bitcoin and even serves up employee bonuses in the same currency, proving you can indeed have your steak and stack sats too.

On the balance sheet, Fold "extinguished" two convertible debt instruments, a fancy way of saying they torched some structural baggage to free up capital for growth. With the card live, an enterprise product out the door, and a cleaner cap table, 2026's playbook is a simple one: scale everything—acquisition, engagement, cross-sell—and try not to lose every user.

The company's Bitcoin treasury has been ruthlessly trimmed from 1,527 BTC at year-end to just 827 BTC as of March 17, a near-50% haircut. Meanwhile, FLD shares have nosedived 59% so far in 2026 and are down a catastrophic 83.8% over the past year. After a post-earnings after-hours pump that lifted the price 13.4% to $1.27, the stock promptly gave back 4.46% the next day, settling at a cool $1.07—because in crypto, no green candle goes unpunished.