Monolith (TKN) wasn’t just another crypto coin. It was a bold attempt to make cryptocurrency actually usable in the real world - like paying for coffee, groceries, or a train ticket with ETH or DAI. Launched in 2017, Monolith built a non-custodial wallet and a Visa debit card that let users spend their crypto directly, without selling it first. For a while, it worked. Over 35,000 people in Europe used it. More than $113 million in crypto transactions flowed through it. Then, in 2025, the company quietly shut down.

What Monolith Actually Did

Monolith wasn’t a bank. It wasn’t even a typical crypto exchange. It was a smart contract wallet on Ethereum that gave you a physical Visa card. You loaded it with crypto - ETH, DAI, MKR, or TKN - and the platform automatically converted it to euros or pounds at the point of sale. No need to manually sell crypto on an exchange, wait for the bank transfer, then load your debit card. It all happened in seconds, behind the scenes.

The big twist? You kept control of your private keys. Unlike Coinbase or Revolut, Monolith didn’t hold your crypto. If your phone got stolen, you could recover your wallet using your seed phrase. That made it a rare non-custodial solution with real-world spending power.

The TKN Token - Utility, Not Speculation

TKN was the native token of the Monolith platform. Its main job? Lower fees. If you converted crypto to fiat using TKN, you paid just 1% instead of the standard 2%. That made holding TKN useful - if you used the card regularly. It wasn’t designed to be a speculative asset. But like most crypto tokens, that’s exactly what people did.

TKN’s all-time high was $4.39 in January 2018. By 2025, it traded between $0.04 and $0.08. Its total supply was around 30 million tokens, but almost none were circulating. Why? Because Monolith burned most of the tokens after its initial sale. The market cap hovered near zero. Trading volume? About $44 a day, mostly on Uniswap V2. The token still exists - but it has no active platform to support it.

How the System Worked - Gas Tanks and Whitelists

Using Monolith wasn’t plug-and-play. You had to understand Ethereum. Every time you topped up your card, changed your spending limit, or added a whitelisted address, you paid a gas fee in ETH. To make this easier, Monolith created a “Gas tank” - a small ETH balance you kept in your wallet just to cover transaction costs. If your Gas tank ran out, you couldn’t do anything until you added more ETH.

Security was built in. You could set daily spending limits. You could whitelist addresses to bypass those limits. Every transaction required a PIN or Face ID. The wallet was audited three times by third-party firms. Open-source code meant anyone could check it. For a non-custodial product, it was one of the most secure options on the market.

Why It Was Different - And Why It Failed

Monolith was ahead of its time. In 2018, most crypto users didn’t have debit cards. Crypto was for trading, not spending. Monolith made spending possible. But it had flaws.

• You could only convert crypto to fiat - not the other way around. No buying crypto with euros on the app.
• The Gas tank system confused newcomers. If you didn’t understand Ethereum fees, you got locked out.
• Only 6 tokens could be converted to fiat: ETH, DAI, MKR, TKN, DGD, DGX. Most other tokens were useless on the platform.
• ATM withdrawals cost €0.85 after two free ones per month.
• It only worked in the EEA - 31 European countries. No U.S., no Asia.

Meanwhile, bigger players moved in. Revolut, N26, and Crypto.com launched their own crypto debit cards. They were easier to use, supported more currencies, and didn’t require you to manage gas fees. Monolith’s technical edge became a barrier.

The Shutdown and What It Means for TKN Holders

In early 2025, Monolith announced it was shutting down. The team cited regulatory pressure, rising operational costs, and the difficulty of scaling a non-custodial model in a world where banks and fintechs were copying their idea - but with simpler, custodial systems.

Customers were given months to withdraw their remaining crypto. The Visa cards stopped working. The app went offline. The website now just says: “Monolith has completed its mission.”

So what happens to TKN? Nothing, really. The token still trades on Uniswap - but no one’s buying it for utility. It’s just a speculative relic. If you still hold TKN, it’s worth a few cents. It won’t be redeemed. It won’t be relaunched. It’s a digital artifact of an ambitious experiment that ran its course.

Monolith’s Legacy

Monolith proved something important: you can spend crypto like cash without giving up control of your keys. It showed that DeFi could connect to the real economy - not just as a speculative asset, but as a payment tool.

It didn’t survive. But its ideas did. Today, you can find similar features in wallets like Argent, Rainbow, and even Apple Wallet’s crypto support. The concept of a non-custodial debit card is no longer sci-fi. It’s just harder to build than it looks.

Monolith was a bridge. And like all bridges, it was meant to be crossed - not lived on.