If you didn't read my first Post about my 2021 Staking Project you can find it here.
But the TL;DR is that I wanted to invest around $250 each in SUN, FARM, DFI and CAKE staking to see how my profits look like after a year and which one yields the best results.
First of all I want to thank all of you for the interest in this project! I never thought that this many people are interested in something like this. I really hope I don't disappoint you all with my embarrassingly small knowledge about staking and DeFi. But this is more of a learning by doing approach than a How to guide, keep that in mind. I already learned quite a bit from the commentators last time and I full heartedly appreciate that!
What happened so far?
Well, the start wasn't very optimal to say the least. As you could tell from my last post, I'm neither a financial expert nor a crypto genius. I'm a through and through normal guy, willing to learn it the hard way. Now to tell you what happened so far, I guess it would be the best to split it up how my transactions looked for each of the different currencies. As a statement here, yes the transactions aren't optimised but that has to do with the country / credit restrictions where I live, basically it's very very difficult to find a working exchange that gets approved by either my bank or card provider. A few of you have been telling me to use a VPN, which I will surely try out the next time!
Also as a side note. If you spot an absolute terrible mistake I'm doing please do not hesitate to tell me, no matter how obvious it might be. I'm still learning here and appreciate any and all feedback, positive or negative!
Start of Stake 2021/01/26
The elephant in the room: SUN
Initially I wanted to invest 1/4 of my budget into the SUN.io staking pool for TRX. After hearing several people in the last comment section advising me to keep away from SUN I contemplated for a while on what to do. After having a look around and reading your answers in the previous comment section, I've decided to put the money into Traphouse assets staked on beefy.finance on the Binance Smart Chain. Not only because of the low fees but also because the APY is looking promising.
With a quick glance at the current value you might think "oh god that dropped in value" but in reality the token is just very volatile currently being worth +$200 one day and the next day around $150. So I'm curious how this develops. Beefy has a very user friendly interface though and is extremely simple to use.
Starting Money: $250
Bought BNB: 5.5810 ~ $230
Bought DRUGS v2: 17385.3082 ~ $200 - 210
Network Fees: $0-1
Current Value: $170
The continuous rewards one: DFI
DFI was a very straightforward deal. Buy BTC, send BTC to CakeDeFi address, convert BTC to DFI and finally stake the converted DFI.
I could have bought BTC directly on the platform, cutting out the network fees, but as stated above, my banc / card provider didn't want to let me. DFI pays you every 3 hours on CakeDeFi which feels very rewarding. Also the auto-compounding feature is very nice to have so that every reward you get is automatically staked into the pool again in turn increasing profits.
Starting Money: $250
Bought BTC: 0.00738527 ~ $227
Network Fees: 0.0005917 ~ $19
Current Value: $210
The fun one: CAKE
Cake was a last minute decision. Looking at the prices so far and the competitors I've found it a good investment. This one is on the Binance Smart Chain which meant to get some BNB. Tricky part here was: I never used the BSC to this day. So I was severely confused at first why I couldn't transfer the BNB coins to my wallet. In hindsight sending BNB on the Mainnet to a BSC wallet, should have been an obvious indicator. My steps here where: Buy BNB, transfer BNB via BSC to the wallet, convert BNB to CAKE, stake CAKE. What I had to learn the hard way is that CAKE by itself can only be used to add Liquidity to a pool which in turn generates cake. If I wanted to stake CAKE I would have needed to convert them into LP tokens and then stake those. Looking on the bright side of things, I at least learned something.
Overall I really love the UI and UX of PancakeSwap. It's simple, straightforward and relatively easy to understand. Also the fees on the BSC are surprisingly miniscule.
Starting Money: $250
Bought BNB: 5.5709 ~ $230
Bought CAKE: 189.253 ~ $229
Transaction Fees: $0-1
Current Value: $358
The gwei Killer: FARM
As I already stated, I'm not a big fan of the whole ERC20 concept, since ETH price influx basically kills all transactions for the tokens. Currently the approval Fee of my FARM tokens where about $6.5. Now that would have been okay but the fee to stake the approved FARM is a whopping $55 in ETH. This would basically kill the profits for the entire year. So for now I will be holding the FARM tokens without staking since it would make no sense to stake them at the current price.
Starting Money: $250
Bought ETH: 0.17954045 ~ $228
Bought Farm: 1.564 ~$207
Transaction Fees: $20 + $6 approval
Current Value: $310
Not looking at FARM, the other tokens cost and fees are about what I expected. I was calculating an initial loss of about $75ish for Transactions, exchanges, etc. For now today I start this Project with these Numbers:
- Total invested 2021/01/26: $1040
- Total Cost of Fees & Exchanges: ~$120
- Current Value of Stake: $1048
Well let's see how this one turns out. I'm most excited about PancakeSwap if I'm honest, DFI is a shot in the dark for me. And FARM has been a little disappointing due to the staking fees but profitable in price influx. Even though I can't nor want to blame FARM for the insane transaction fees. Let's just hope the gas fees go down a bit over the next few weeks.
So far just starting out I would generally say, it's not worth splitting up investments over several staking currencies due to the amount of Fees you have to pay for each currency. But since this project is more of an analysis I don't mind spending the extra amount.
Even if this Project is a total bust, I can finish it happily at the end of this year, if it helped someone out there.
I hope to see you all for the next update at the end of February!
