You wake up after a BTC rally and you want to check your portfolio. No way to access. You contact support to check. The support responds: "It is SAFU".
SAFU... Four letters for Secure Asset Fund for Users, meaning that an emergency reserve is held to protect any invested assets, so that the money can then be used to pay back investors "in the event of a hack or other event resulting in the loss of user assets".
Should you trust them?
Please find below a comparison of the options that you have to hodl your coins and earn some rewards at the same time in a "SAFU" way:
- Centralized exchanges - I know what you are thinking, the exchanges are not safe to keep your cryptos, let's take a look at that...
- Coinbase: it really smells like an old fashioned lady nowadays. Although you can easily trade on Coinbase Pro, it does not look competitive anymore compared to Binance or FTX. I use it only to earn a few coins through Coinbase Earn. Please find below the links to earn these coins:
- Binance: if you are not in the US, that's a convenient platform. You can do so many things on Binance... According to their advertising, they are SAFU. The famous four letters. Should you trust? I have personally never experienced any problem with them, and even feel more comfortable than on some DeFi protocols. Please click on this link to register and earn a 5% retrocommission on trading fees.
- Crypto.com: I have used them for a while and never got any problem. Furthermore, their Visa card offers a good cash back (like Binance) and allows to get Netflix and Spotify free of charge. Click on this link to earn $25 by registering - Referral code: 439km3wyjs
- Custodial wallets - some of you will think I should never mention them... "not your keys, not your cryptos", but they are so easy to use...
- Celsius: I used to be a big fan, but the APYs they propose are low compared to DeFi. I also faced some accessibility issues when the market moved a lot, like when Elon decided to buy $1.5 billion BTC...
- Dharma: omg... their fees are so high... I transferred the few CEL I earned on Celsius there to swap against ETH... but the fees were so high that it would have taken me half of my rewards... So I decided to transfer my CEL to FTX finally (the best solution to swap your CEL tokens), but the transfer fees requested by Dharma were quite high...
- Blockfi, Nexo and other similar wallets: I think it is similar to Celsius. Never used them. I would be cautious about who is behind
- Non custodial wallets - the ones I prefer, because "not your keys, not your cryptos", right?
- Atomic wallet: quite convenient. Never got any problem with them. Just avoid to swap on it, they take high fees. Apart from that, it looks really safe and it is a good solution to stake tokens like XTZ, BAND or ALGO - one of my favorites
- Trustwallet / Coinbase wallet / or any wallet you can use through Metamask: a really good solution if you keep your seed phrase secret - please be very cautious with that. Once you have this wallet, to earn interests, you need to go on DeFi protocols. That's where you have to be cautious too. The APYs are attractive, but they are not all equally safe. You will think: as long as I get my rewards and can remove my coins, no problem, right? However, many protocols have already been hacked. Nobody will tell you when it's going to happen. Keep in mind that it's never 100% sure and do your own research about the TVL, the audits that were done - and by whom, and the problems they already had. Furthermore, any transaction on Ethereum blockchain will cost you $500+... Binance Smart Chain is much cheaper, but is it 100% safe?
In summary, there is no ideal solution. It is always preferable to use several options to mitigate the risks. Do your own research, and keep SAFU.
