Today I'd like to share some notes about Celsius Network, a crypto-wallet with loans and interest-bearing accounts. Like a lot of other things, it has many pros -- and quite a bit of cons, too.
Let me talk about its pros first.
And its 1st pro is reputation! Celsius Network is not yet another satowallet from nobody knows who. The team behind Celsius is known, it has enough experience and reputation to entrust them your hard-earned crypto. The business model is clear, and it's hardly a ponzi. Also Lloyd's insurance and everything. Of course, Celsius is nowhere near to a FDIC-insured account, but by cryptocurrency standards, it may be considered quite a safe haven.
The 2nd pro is interest-bearing accounts. Yup, the wallet supports a decent number of coins, the accounts pay interest weekly, and the interest rates are competitive (not with HYIPs, but with the projects of similar qualities).
The 3rd pro is CEL token traded on several exchanges.
The interest rates can be even higher if you choose to get interest in CEL tokens. Besides, if you keep a portion of your portfolio in CEL, you get a "loyalty bonus" of several percentage points to interest rates. E.g. let's imagine you keep 10% (by value) of your total portfolio in CEL tokens and receive all interest in CEL. So you're eligible for a "platinum loyalty bonus" of 30 p.p. If "normal" interest on BTC is 3% -- your platinum interest rate will be 3 x 1.3 = 3.9% which you receive in CEL. Shortly, it may be (or rather, it is, actually) more profitable to get interest payments in CEL tokens and always keep some CEL "staked" in the wallet.
The 4th one is no fees both on deposits and withdrawals.
And the 5th pro is loans. Actually, I'm not interested in loans that much, so I didn't research this part deep enough. I can only tell that Celsius has crypto-backed loans -- and it's better than if it hadn't.
Now let's talk of the cons.
And the 1st con is that Celsius Network wants your KYC. My religion hates KYCs, especially for projects that scream "#Unbankyourself!!!1" and similar sh$t. However, I think this particular project does deserve my KYC, and it went through quite smooth and fast.
The 2nd con is not so speculative -- Celsius doesn't have a web interface, only Android and iOS apps. It's rather inconvenient if you still use a 10-years old Nokia with Symbian and buttons, like me... Besides, it's rather inconvenient even if you have a modern gadget, but every day actively mess with a lot of exchanges, miners, web wallets, etc. on your laptop or PC.
The 3rd con is even worse -- there's no compounding. That is if you deposit 1 BTC as principal once -- interest will be earned on that 1 BTC forever, no matter how much interest you receive, in BTC or CEL. As far as I can understand, compounding works only for CEL account.
The 4th con is even worse than the 3rd one -- upon withdrawal, you withdraw principal first and interest second. In other words, let's suggest you deposited 1 BTC as principal and earn interest in BTC also. After some time you have 1 BTC principal and 0.01 BTC accrued interest on your account. And if you withdraw 0.01 BTC then -- you will have 0.99 BTC as interest-bearing principal and the same 0.01 BTC not-compounded accrued interest. If you try to make compounding manually, withdrawing everything out of Celsius and depositing it back again -- you will face transaction costs. If you choose to get interest in CEL, swap it for BTC on an exchange and deposit BTC back to Celsius as principal -- you will face transaction costs and volatility. Both options are worse...
Shortly, the system is designed to make you keep coins in the wallet -- and to make the system pay you less for it, preferably in its own token. Well, it's quite logical from Celsius' point of view but kinda opposite of what you might want...
"So is Celsius Network scam or legit... ahmm, good or bad option?" you might ask. It depends on how you can cook it. It's not the best option if you want a compounding passive income, and quickly. However, in my case, if you saw my article on my investment strategy, Celsius looks like a good "Tier 0" place. "Always do your own research of what you actually want", what else I can tell...?
Disclaimer: I'm neither an employee nor an owner of any cryptocurrency project, including the above-mentioned ones. The article is informational, and not an endorsement, guarantee or financial advice of any kind. The links are affiliate. I myself own assets at Celsius Network.
