Alternative Title: Flipping Celsius with Coinbase – Success Story

Yesterday I posted with a problem and today I resolved it, although slightly later than I would have ideally liked.

All I wanted to do was take advantage of the surge in Ethereum Prices and simply transfer them to a higher yielding coin; in this case DAI. Ethereum earns 7.06 APY and DAI is currently offering 10.51% APY. Additionally because of the surge, whatever happens now was the time to change because the price of Ethereum had increased by 17% between the time I got it and the time yesterday when I wanted to change it.

However, the result for carrying out the transaction was:

I am just grateful I was able to cancel the transaction before it went through.

While not as bad as the story that recently did the rounds in which an investor spent more than $9000 on gas frees for a $120 transaction it still smacks of a rip off; the percentage is about the same (approx. 14% return with 86% going on gas) the only real difference is that I was trying to move a smaller amount.

So today thanks to recommendations on my previous post (and in particular by Mynima) I decided to flip Celsius with my Coinbase wallet. Unfortunately due to changing addresses on Celsius I had to wait 24 hours to make the transaction and in the meantime there was a slight retreat in Ethereum prices (from £353 to £347). However, I still won in the end despite this.

This is what to do.

• Transfer the currency you hold (in my case Ethereum) to Coinbase – takes about 10 minutes COMMISSION FREE
• Convert to the desired currency (in my case DAI). Coinbase take a bit of a percentage for this
• Send the DAI to Celsius, there is a gas price for this, but nowhere near as much as Celsius were charging.
• The whole process from start to finish took about 25 minutes

The results were as follows, although the figures have been approximated:

14% vs. 98.7% is a no brainer. Please remember though that the 98.7% is slightly high because Coinbase took a very small commission for doing the Ethereum to DAI transfer.

Furthermore at 10.51% on DAI it will only take about 7 weeks to recover the gas fees in interest and just a bit longer to recover Coinbase's commission for the original Ethereum to DAI conversion. It's also important to remember DAI as a stablecoin doesn’t really change value too much so you are not going to lose so long as you hodl your DAI for at least 3 months and ideally longer. From then on it will yield 3% more than if I had continued to hold it in Ethereum.

The mind boggles as to why Celsius Network don’t have their own efficient inter-currency change. I have written previously how I love Celsius, but maybe this almost appears to be a deliberate trap for the naïve to fall into. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind paying for services but not excessively.

While Coinbase are fast becoming a go to platform they have had to overcome a reputation for being expensive and they historically also had a number of traps that need to be avoided (see my post on the topic here). However, on this they are performing significantly better than Celsius.

Finally for today beware, be careful and don’t spend too much on gas.