Hello folks, so let me preface again that this is not financial advice nor am I a financial advisor. Please do your own research to decide what the best investments are for you.
Why are we talking about BlockFi now? Hasn't it been around for awhile?
So my assumption for everyone reading this is that you already know what BlockFi is, and that's because BlockFi in the cryptoworld has been around for relatively a long time, making itself a household name as a reliable place to park your crypto, and giving at least average savings rates with different stable coins and the basic (ETH, BTC, etc.) cryptocurrencies. In a nutshell, it's become a household name for crypto lending/borrowing, and not only that, one of the first crypto credit cards, albeit, kind of a horrible one (more details on that later). I used to LOVE BlockFi, but as I've gotten much more active in buying and selling, I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated with its limitations, which is the reason why I'm going to be spelling out the reasons why I've been pulling money out, but also the reasons why after 3 years I still have money in it.
BlockFi is not for day traders.
Look, not to come off as condescending but I'm going to repeat it again, BlockFI is NOT for day traders. There was a period of time last spring/summer and so when BTC was jumping up and down about 5k in value, and I thought that I was one of the smartest people on earth by buying the dip and selling high with USDC. And well, while I was making a profit, but I thought I was smart doing this on BlockFi rather than on other platforms because they might have associated network/transaction fees, what I never took into account is that regardless of any said "fees," BlockFI's buy/sell prices already have that factored in. Now I haven't done the deep dive to see how/if this differs for other cryptocurrencies, but given the fact that you can't do limit on orders, I've found that no matter what you do on BlockFi, you pretty much HAVE to pay that 1% difference either way for doing a trade.
Money doesn't go out...easily
So whenever you're doing a transfer out of BlockFI, you better hope that you don't need whatever you're transferring out immediately. When I was sending 11 ETH to a friend, it took about...7 days? Now thankfully the transaction wasn't price dependent, but during the time, the price changed by about 15%. On top of that, the entire time I was waiting for the transfer to go through, I was sweating bullets that I may have accidentally sent my ETH to the wrong address. However despite the lengthy transaction time, BlockFi was still offering 1 free withdrawal a month on ETH. However, his was also a bit frustrating, because normally I would have liked to do a test transaction of 0.01 ETH to my friends wallet but I (for better or worse) decided not to do the test transaction because I wanted to take advantage of the free trade. 
I'm not entirely sure what GWEI was running at during this time, but I know one of my friends made a similar transfer on a different platform and ended up paying around $400USD. To note, Blockfi still offers some free withdrawals for certain currencies, but ETH was removed from the 1-free trade list a the beginning of this past month.
BlockFi is still a good place to onramp fiat
So this is where things start to get a little bit complicated, and where there's a lot of "What If's." You'll notice in the fee structure above that there is 1-free trade with certain currencies, especially many stable coins once a month. Therefore, what I've been doing lately is if it's towards the end of the calendar month, i'll onramp fiat from my bank because I know that I'll get that first trade free. Now on the flipside, I'll seldom do this if it's at the beginning of the month, for the same reason--no matter how small or large an amount I'm trying to take out of Blockfi, if I've exceeded my first free trade, then I'm going to be paying a flat fee of 50USD to unload it. Simply said, there's many other to do it a lot cheaper. What really bothers me--Is the BAT withdrawal fee. (60BAT? Seriously?) Another plus side of using BlockFI to onramp, is that ACH funding goes to BlockFI pretty instantaneously. And just to clarify, not that the money leaves your account immediately, but that you'll have the money in your BlockFi account immediately, meaning also that you'll start accruing interest rates immediately. So in other words, if I do an 1000USD ACH transfer, I'll immediately have 1000GUSD in my BlockFI account earning 9% interest. However, once again keep in mind that although it's easy to put the money, it might take a lot longer to take it out.
Rate transparency
Something that I appreciate is transparency. With it's rate changes, BlockFI does send out an e-mail about 1 week or so in advance in regards to how their rates or fees might be changing, for better or for worse.
And although, their rates aren't necessarily the best, like I said, I do appreciate the transparency and the consistency. For instance, as much as I love okCoin, it's frustrating when you see staking rates change dramatically with no notice. Last week for instance I saw that they had a 23% APY on USDT! I quickly moved money in...only to realize that it really was too good to be true and the next day it dropped down to I think around 7%. There is a value to knowing what you're getting, and BlockFi, for all it's faults, does provide that.
The Credit Card...a.k.a. piece of garbage
I don't know who on BlockFI decided to take this on, but an absolute garbage offer. No joke, whenever I see one of these ads pop up, it makes me feel viscerally angry
Even WITH a $75 dollar signup bonus, the offer is complete garbage. And please do not be fooled with the fact that it earns up to 3.5% cash back in your first 3 months. This "3.5% cash back" is only for $100 dollars worth. This essentially means that you have to spend approximately $2,857.14 to get the full hundred dollars. Even with that, this means for the average consumer trying to max out the signup bonus, this is roughly $175 for $3000 spend. Just off the top of my head, I can think of 10 cards that have a better signup bonus than this one. Ok I'm throwing a referral link in here, but case in point: the Chase Sapphire Preferred. With a current 60,000 point signup bonuses, you can literally change the points out for $600 USD, or better yet redeem for travel and get an extra 25%. If you have any other question on any other credit cards, referral or no, message me and I can give a ton of suggestions based on your spend.
So what now?
Look bottom line is that I still highly recommend BlockFi to people who are really inactive with their crypto and just need a safe place to park it. I also recommend it to people that need to onramp fiat (as long as it's toward the end of the calendar month). But other than that, I would suggest using another app because you'll avoid death by a thousand papercuts. And another thing, if you're NOT a current BlockFI user but are interested in making an account, feel free to use my referral link to do so: https://blockfi.com/?ref=bf0af2ad, you and I will both get $10 in BTC for doing so.
Anything I miss? Any other big advantages or disadvantages of BlockFI that I haven't mentioned?
