Phantom

Phantom is a self-custodial cryptocurrency wallet, meaning the user controls the funds and the company states it never has access to them. It has extended beyond holding assets into spending them, issuing a prepaid Visa debit card through Lead Bank with Bridge Ventures acting as programme manager, usable anywhere Visa is accepted.

Adding a card is the significant move and it addresses the gap that has always limited these wallets. Holding an asset is not the same as being able to buy anything with it, and a card that converts at the point of sale turns a wallet from a place value sits into an account somebody can actually spend from.

The disclosure about the banking arrangement is worth reading rather than skipping. The card is issued by a licensed bank and the programme manager is explicitly not a bank, which is the standard structure for these products and determines what protections apply to a balance held there.

Self-custody remains the underlying property and its consequence is unchanged. Nobody can freeze the wallet and nobody can restore it, so the recovery phrase is the entire security model and losing it is final. Adding a card does not change that; it adds a spending route on top of the same arrangement.