Obviously I’d prefer to pay in crypto directly but some of the stores I shop in don’t accept it yet. In person I can pay in cash but shopping privately online is a different story. Gift cards are the next best option, and thanks to them I can use the self checkout scanner and online stores without my purchasing history being tracked. It also allows me to store my savings in a hard asset that can’t be easily confiscated, frozen, inflated or stolen, that I can permissionlessly spend whenever I need to, that no one knows how much of or if I have, that if needs be I can flee the country with in an instant without worry that it will be sized or lost. And it gives me the freedom to not be at the mercy of the banking system and just take their debit card fee, debit card issuance fee, debit card replacement fee, transfer fee, deposit fee, overdraft fee, underdraft fee, too little money fee, account having fee, fuck you what you gonna do fee…