Coinbase Partners With American Express To Launch Bitcoin-Backed Credit Card
Coinbase has entered the world of credit cards after announcing the launch of the Coinbase One Card in partnership with American Express.
First Electronic Bank issues the Bitcoin rewards credit card, which operates on the American Express network.
Coinbase Removes Waitlist For The Coinbase One Card
Coinbase has removed the waitlist for its Coinbase One Card, opening it up to thousands of US-based users. The card, created in partnership with American Express, offers up to 4% Bitcoin cashback, depending on how much cryptocurrency the user holds on the platform. However, all cardholders are entitled to a minimum of 2% cashback. Cardholders can pay bills using a linked account or directly by using the cryptocurrency held on the exchange, without incurring international transaction fees.
The card is available exclusively to Coinbase One members, with rewards automatically credited to the user’s Coinbase Digital Asset wallets. While the card does not have an annual or foreign transaction fee, it requires a Coinbase One subscription. Coinbase One’s entry-level membership is priced at $49.99 and offers several advantages, like zero trading fees and priority customer support. Unlike the earlier debit offering from Coinbase, the Coinbase One Card is a true credit card with revolving balances, purchase protections, and is accepted at all locations that accept American Express cards.
A Significant Milestone
The partnership is historic for Coinbase and American Express. American Express is powering its first-ever crypto rewards product. The collaboration combines traditional credit infrastructure and the appeal of digital assets. It is also a signal that mainstream financial networks are increasingly open to blockchain-based rewards systems. Meanwhile, the partnership enhances Coinbase’s goal of creating a unified financial ecosystem where customers can trade, hold, and spend crypto within a familiar payment framework.
The Coinbase One Card also raises an important question of whether crypto-based rewards can compete with traditional cash-back programs. Unlike conventional assets, the value of Bitcoin is highly volatile. A 4% cash-back in BTC could be worth more or less, depending on market conditions. Bitcoin’s high volatility is what gives the card its appeal, but makes it risky as well.
On the other hand, established cards like the Citi Double Cash or the Wells Fargo Active Cash cards offer a fixed, predictable return in USD, and do not involve a subscription cost.
A Statement Of Intent
The new credit card is more than just a membership perk from Coinbase. Instead, it is a statement of intent. Coinbase aims to blur the boundary between traditional and digital finance and use the American Express network as a bridge between conventional spending and the crypto economy. The partnership gives American Express a foothold in the digital asset space without directly managing or custodying crypto, while aligning itself with one of the largest players in the crypto ecosystem.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice
You May Also Like
Tether Backs Ark Labs’ $5.2 Million Bet on Bitcoin’s Stablecoin Revival
MySQL Single Leader Replication with Node.js and Docker
command: --server-id=1 --log-bin=ON The --server-id option gives each MySQL server in your replication setup its own name tag. Each one has to be unique and without it, replication won’t work at all. Another cool option not included here is binlog_format=ROW. This tells MySQL how to keep track of changes before passing them along to the replicas. By default, MySQL already uses row-based replication, but you can explicitly set it to ROW to be sure or switch it to STATEMENT if you’d rather log the actual SQL statements instead of row-by-row changes. \ Run our containers on docker Now, in the terminal, we can run the following command to spin up our database containers: docker-compose up -d \ Setting Up Our Master (Primary) Server To configure our master server, we would have to first access the running instance on docker using the following command docker exec -it mysql-master bash This command opens an interactive Bash shell inside the running Docker container named mysql-master, allowing us to run commands directly inside that container. \ Now that we’re inside the container, we can access the MySQL server and start running commands. type: mysql -uroot -p This will log you into MySQL as the root user. You’ll be prompted to enter the password you set in your docker-compose.yml file. \ Next, we need to create a special user that our replicas will use to connect to the master server and pull data. Inside the MySQL prompt, run the following commands: \ CREATE USER 'repl_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'replication_pass'; GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON . TO 'repl_user'@'%'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; Here’s what’s happening: CREATE USER makes a new MySQL user called repl_user with the password replication_pass. GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE gives this user permission to act as a replication client. FLUSH PRIVILEGES tells MySQL to reload the user permissions so they take effect immediately. \ Time to Configure the Replica (Secondary) Servers a. First, let’s access the replica containers the same way we did with the master. Run this command in your terminal for each of the replica containers: \ docker exec -it <replica_container_name> bash mysql -uroot -p <replica_container_name> should be replace with the name of the replica container you are trying to setup b. Now it’s time to tell our replica where to get its data from. While inside the replica’s MySQL shell, run the following command to configure replication using the master’s details: CHANGE REPLICATION SOURCE TO SOURCE_HOST='mysql-master', SOURCE_USER='repl_user', SOURCE_PASSWORD='replication_pass', GET_SOURCE_PUBLIC_KEY=1; With the replication settings in place, let’s fire up the replica and get it syncing with the master. Still inside the MySQL shell on the replica, run: START REPLICA; This starts the replication process. To make sure everything is working, check the replica’s status with:
SHOW REPLICA STATUS\G; Look for Replica_IO_Running and Replica_SQL_Running — if both say Yes, congratulations! 🎉 Your replica is now successfully connected to the master and replicating data in real time.
Testing Our Replication Setup from the Node.js App Now that our replication is successfully set up, we can configure our Node.js server to observe the real-time effect of data being replicated from the master server to the replica server whenever we write to it. We start by installing the following dependencies:
npm i express mysql2 sequelize \ Now create a folder called src in the root directory and add the following files inside that folder connection.js, index.js and model.js. Our current directory should look like this We can now set up our connections to our master and replica server in the connection.js file as shown below
const Sequelize = require("sequelize"); const sequelize = new Sequelize({ dialect: "mysql", replication: { write: { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "master", database: "replicaDb", }, read: [ { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "slave", database: "replicaDb", port: 3307 }, { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "slave", database: "replicaDb", port: 3308 }, { host: "127.0.0.1", username: "root", password: "slave", database: "replicaDb", port: 3309 }, ], }, }); async function connectdb() { try { await sequelize.authenticate(); } catch (error) { console.error("❌ unable to connect to the follower database", error); } } connectdb(); module.exports = { sequelize, }; \ We can now create a User table in the model.js file
const {DataTypes} = require("sequelize"); const { sequelize } = require("./connection"); const User = sequelize.define("User", { name: { type: DataTypes.STRING, allowNull: false, }, email: { type: DataTypes.STRING, unique: true, allowNull: false, }, }); module.exports = User \ and finally in our index.js file we can start our server and listen for connections on port 3000. from the code sample below, all inserts or updates will be routed by sequelize to the master server. while all read queries will be routed to the read replicas.
const express = require("express"); const { sequelize } = require("./connection"); const User = require("./model"); const app = express(); app.use(express.json()); async function main() { await sequelize.sync({ alter: true }); app.get("/", (req, res) => { res.status(200).json({ message: "first step to setting server up", }); }); app.post("/user", async (req, res) => { const { email, name } = req.body; let newUser = await User.build({ name, email, }); // This INSERT will go to the write (master) connection newUser = newUser.save({ returning: false }); res.status(201).json({ message: "User successfully created", }); }); app.get("/user", async (req, res) => { // This SELECT query will go to one of the read replicas const users = await User.findAll(); res.status(200).json(users); }); app.listen(3000, () => { console.log("server has connected"); }); } main(); When you make a POST request to the /users endpoint, take a moment to check both the master and replica servers to observe how data is replicated in real time. Right now, we are relying on Sequelize to automatically route requests, which works for development but isn’t robust enough for a production environment. In particular, if the master node goes down, Sequelize cannot automatically redirect requests to a newly elected leader. In the next part of this series, we’ll explore strategies to handle these challenges
