Hi everyone, as a reminder this is not financial advice and this is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please as always, do your own research and find what investments are best for you. 

What is Midas Investments? - A Short Recap

Similar to other investment platforms, Midas Investments is a crypto-investment platform where you can earn passive income on a wide variety of different cryptocurrencies. But what sets it apart from other platforms? The exchange APY rates. If you've followed my other posts, you'll know that I'm a pretty big fan of Midas Investments. Their yields have been updated as I'll get into shortly, but despite the changes, they still continue to offer the best native returns (or even slightly increased higher than before with their Midas Boost), which are compounded and added daily:

A couple of months ago, Midas hit their 4-year anniversary, which is an impressive feat in the world of crypto. (that’s like decades in dog years right?) and they have consistently provided returns that are higher than any non-custodial platform out there. Despite the market crashes back in February and now in May, Midas has had an exponential level of new capital that has come in, which has ultimately caused them to have to reformulate and de-risk their strategies in order to provide consistent and stable returns. And with the market imploding at this point, it came to no surprise that at the end of April, they announced that their interest rates had to adjust in order to remain sustainable for their users. However despite these changes, they still continue to offer some of the best native interest accrual rates on stable coins that are paid out natively (all at 18.1% APY) or now roughly 22% APY if you're getting paid out through their Midas boost. 

After using Midas for now almost 6 months, it’s extremely hard for me to take any other “reputable” platforms such as Blockfi and Gemini seriously, who at best might offer a paltry 3–5% APY on blue chips or if you're lucky maybe around 9% on stables. Through their AMA’s, youtube videos, and discord, the team continues to be very transparent, and they continue to give fairly adequate notice about what steps or changes they have made or are planning to make (I'll get into that further) which has ultimately increased my level of trust in their ecosystem. 

With this article, I'll highlight some of their updates they've come out with this month, as well as cover some of the new information that I've discovered which has not only given me greater trust for the Midas team, but has given me greater insight for how they are operated and what they're about. 

Updated Yield Rates

In a nutshell the biggest news are the rate changes that were announced in April and are effective as of May 9th. These are as follows:

You'll notice as well too that the native rates for both BTC and ETH have decreased as well, but once again, still significantly higher than any other non-custodial platform. No one likes to hear about rate decreases, but the rate reduction essentially allows them to continue to operate with reduced risk.  Essentially they have rebuilt their portfolio in order to de-risk their holdings and to ensure sustainability. These are complemented by the fact that you can still earn the same (if not slightly better) with the Midas boost. I'll get a bit more into the tokenomics of Midas later, but if you wish to opt into Midas boosts instead of native token/coin interest accrual, it's as simple as a click of a button. 

Since February, they have also added several different tokens such as JOE, CVX, and TOKE, while maintaining some of the highest APY's on oldies like AVAX at 17% APY (which I still have yet to see anywhere else). Returns on some tokens aren't as good however like ATOM at 7% APY, which is only about half of what you could get if you were staking it in your own Keplr wallet. Nonetheless, Midas truly offers a convenient way to consistently get paid out relatively high interest rates on blue chip cryptos as well as stable coins. 

How do they Generate their returns?

If you were like me, the first thing you’ll probably think is: How the hell do they get these types of yields? Well incidentally, this was also the #1 question that was asked/answered on the interview with the CEO a couple of months ago, and the answer seemed to go deep, but in short: liquidity pools, yield vaults, dynamic lending, and leveraging. Primarily for the liquidity pools portion, they pair a lot of blue chip cryptos through places like sushiswap or uniswap. 

Incidentally due to market conditions and huge influxes of new capital, the Midas investing department (now made of a 16-person team), are fine tuning automated strategies which will hopefully them scale into the billions of dollars TVL. In a nutshell, the majority of holdings on Midas are diversified onto multiple layer 1 protocols, with an added emphasis on diversified stable coin farming. A small 5-10 percent of their portfolio is typically placed into riskier assets, but as I'll talk about later, overall they are systematically reducing their risk and de-leveraging their positions. With that in mind, they have stated that there should be no rate adjustments in the near future, and even if there are, it should not be as dramatic as reductions were in February, meaning that they should only notionally increase or decrease their rates 5-10% from where they are based on market conditions.

One of their new strategies as of a couple of months ago was their addition of CVX, with the intention to use their Convex holding to participate in Curve's liquidity wars. If you're unfamiliar with Curve, it's essentially known as a stable coin hub where Curve/Convex holders can vote on which of their liquidity pools can get boosted rewards.  

Also speaking of Curve, I was also relieved to find that after the Terra death spiral, that Midas had not invested any of their funds into Anchor or UST, which I was actually personally surprised by, since I had just made a blanket assumption that this was how they were able to produce such great rates on their stables. They have also announced multiple times that part of the de-risking strategy that they have incorporated involved the de-leveraging of their assets, which I was also happy to hear, knowing that so many people have been experiencing liquidations in the current market. In case if you've never heard of leveraging, it's essentially putting up collateral to borrow more collateral over and over again. Leveraged positions have a huge upside because it allows you to have bigger gains on bigger amounts of capital, but they also can have a huge downside with bigger losses and liquidations. 

Is Midas 100% transparent about all of their methods? No. But as I'm learning about how adaptable and how numbered their strategies are to different market conditions, I understand why it might be difficult to do so--many of the specifics that may give are probably subject to constant change. Regardless of all this, I do have to say that I’ve scoured YouTube videos, discord channels, and other independent reviews, and one thing is certain–people using Midas are getting paid for their deposits and they have also been depositing and withdrawing their cryptocurrencies back and forth from Midas with no problems…and they have been for years. To reiterate, I have not found a single review where they cannot withdraw or access their funds. 

Updates on Increasing Security

Audits: Midas Investments has plans on getting an audit by Armanino, but this is only after they get done with either their Swiss asset management license and/or their Emirati (Dubai) business license, which they anticipate will happen by this Summer. If you haven't heard of Armanino, they were the ones that audited Nexo last year.  

Insurance: Earlier this year in order for enhanced security, even though Midas itself isn’t insured, all assets have now been placed on Fireblocks, which IS insured. Now I’m not a liability expert, but my assumption is that if your assets that Midas holds gets hacked into, then there will be coverage, but if you yourself get hacked, that will not be covered. This is a really similar setup for many different platforms including BlockFi and Celsius. An interesting thing that I read was that back when they were primarily focused on Masternodes, Midas Investments did experience a hack, but Midas users never felt the impact because the company absorbed the losses themselves. Although this is concerning because hacks imply vulnerability, I am appeased by the fact that they are planning on getting audited to help identify potential vulnerabilities going further. In addition, for me, the fact that they took a hit financial hit before passing on to their users, shows integrity and increases my trust into Midas even more. 

Additional access measures: Compared to where they were in January, they have now incorporated a 2-FA e-mail login authentication as well as KYC to their platform. Starting in May they are also scheduled to add 2-FA mobile authentication and are working on an option to allow users to whitelist withdrawal addresses as well. Although it does increase security for the platform itself, I know that things like KYC and Google logins are a huge deterrent for some, especially for those who want to stay anon. 

What are the Risks?

Like any non-custodial platform, the biggest risk is if it's not your keys, it's not your crypto. This is why it's highly important that you make sure you do your own research to see if you personally trust the platform with your assets. That being said, as I mentioned before they've been around this space for more than four years now and from what I have found have a pretty stellar track record. If you find anything to the contrary, please reach out to me because I would very much like to hear about it. 

No rates last forever, and I can't imagine that these will either. I personally don't think these rates will last, but not because of Midas' lack of trying. I used to hold more assets in places like BlockFi, Nexo and Celsius, but as we have seen with all three--the bigger you get, the more likely you will be subject to regulations. If Midas continues to attract more users and more growth and as the crypto market matures with more regulations, I can't imagine that this gravy train can run forever. 

Russia: Prior to the war in Ukraine breaking out, Midas was originally headquartered in Russia. Since then, they have reported that the majority of the team has relocated outside of Russia, with the remaining agreeing to do so if needed. And as I mentioned before, they are in the process of licensure with both Switzerland and Dubai, to further dissociate their former ties. In the last AMA, Trevor the CEO went even further to report that he was going to Israel in May to officially change his citizenship to Israel. That being said the major players on the Midas team have doxxed themselves in AMA's and it's clear that their team is growing more and more international. 

The Midas Token

Although this might be subject to change, there is currently no real utility for the $MIDAS token except for it being a store of value for the Midas platform. In other words, if you are investing in $MIDAS tokens, you are investing in Midas itself. If Midas earns more money than expected, the extra value is transferred to the Midas liquidity pool, which in turn ads more value to $MIDAS tokens. And within Midas, the token's value is essentially circulated from Midas boosts, to liquidity pools, and then back to Midas boosts. In late February, they reported that the current emission rate of the token is roughly 1600 tokens a day, and then to be capped at around 5 million which should be in the next 3-5 years, with 1.5 million staked on Midas itself. To date, there's around 2.7 million in circulation.

I'm personally not invested in the $MIDAS token, because with a relatively low marketcap, it's a bit too risky for me, at least for the way the market looks right now. (Although I can tell you that there are a TON of people on Midas' discord channel that are diehard fans) Also, another deterrent for me right now is that the token is on fantom, which has taken quite a few blows as of late. In January I was a bit more bullish about fantom, but now, not as much. If you're interested in reading more about the token itself, I recommend watching their last video dedicated to the token itself. 

Conclusion

It's been a total of 6 months now, and so far I have been very impressed with not only the Midas team, but also the Midas community itself. They've really fostered an environment to help common retailers like me try to understand the market with their weekly reports, as well as to teach people how to maximize their profits through passive income. I've only gained more trust in Midas, and as the market has gotten more and more dire, I've found Midas to be the # 1 place where I'm holding and accumulating my stable coins, especially when places like Anchor are no longer viable. 

If you have any more questions, I highly recommend that you check out the latest AMA that was conducted with Trevor, Midas' CEO in late April. Here, he answers in depth about all the rate changes and many potential things to expect for Midas' future. If you haven't tried out Midas yet but are interested, please consider supporting my blog and using my affiliate link: https://midas.investments?p=0191

Otherwise, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Thanks for reading, and be sure to follow me on my new twitter account: https://twitter.com/CryptosWith