CEL is the native token of the Celsius Network and for those planning to hodl their crypto there is probably no better return than what they offer. I currently hold BAT at 4.67%, Ethereum at 7.06% and DAI at 10.51% (although it was 11.89% as little as a month ago).

I fell immediately in love with Celsius and have, since signing up three weeks ago, made more interest than my bank would give me in THREE YEARS for holding TEN TIMES as many FUNDS in my fiat currency.

However, events over the weekend have rocked my confidence a bit, even though I have found a workaround which I discussed in my previous article Don’t Get Caught Out with High Gas Fees.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with me or the post simply what happened was I wanted to take advantage of a surge in the Ethereum pirce and convert my Ethereum holdings into DAI to stablise the profits. My first thought was to do it within Celsius’ platform, but the gas fees would have amounted to 86% of the total and left me holding just 14% of what I originally had. This was frankly bonkers, but in terms of percentage is very similar in prinicple to the incident that happened just a few weeks ago when an investor paid more than $9000 for a $120 transaction.

It is enough of a coincidence for me to wonder if it was Celsius. I am just speculating of course.

What I ended up doing was flipping my Ethereum in Coinbase which did acquire a gas fee, but I retained 98.7% of the total – which is a far cry from the 14% that Celsius would have left me with. It was a bit inconvenient in that I needed to send my Ethereum to Coinbase then convert it on Coinbase to DAI before sending it back to Celsius. This was three transactions, when it could have just been one.

Ok so thus far I have just rehashed what I wrote in my last post, so what is my point..?

This has caused me to raise a doubt about holding CEL on Celsius. The network actively encourages the user to invest in CEL, either by offering a higher yield in CEL on current holdings rather than in the held currency and offering conversion to CEL (which after the difficulties encountered at the weekend seems markedly ironic).

My concern however is what to do with the CEL that is so beautifully being acquired. I could be wrong here, but I think that for most of us who have a Celsius account it is not our primary trading account. For example I use Coinbase, others may use Binance etc, etc. So I think it is advisable to ensure that before considering a switch to CEL that your primary trading account also lists CEL otherwise it might well just be stuck there. Any attempts to convert it may lead to extremely high gas fees.

Again, and I am just asking the question, maybe the push for CEL is just simply a matter of control for Celsius and they may well be offering extremely lucrative returns on the basis that in many cases they will recoup 86% (of holdings – not just interest) if trying to convert internally.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Celsius and this hasn’t put me off them at all. It is just that in this game, as I learnt with Coinbase, they play smart and we just need to play smarter.

CEL may well be an excellent investment, but do the research and do the sums for yourselves. Furthermore ask yourself what the end strategy for your CEL is, in terms of accessibility, costs and flexibility?

Don’t get caught out. Play smarter, stay safe and stay well and you will be hearing from me again very soon