What's up fam. Imma try to make this as simple and straight-forward as possible because this shit can be a little complicated.
Why You Need a Stablecoin Position
You need to have a stablecoin position. In Finance 1.0 this would be called a "cash position." This is essentially an available amount of capital outside of your investment portfolio so that you can take advantage of major market dips or other black swan type events.
In other words: during the flash-crash that happened around March 12, if you had a stablecoin "cash" position on the side you could have bought bitcoin around $4K and ethereum around $100. Yeah. You need to have a fucking stablecoin position.
How To Get Stablecoins & Which Ones?
Honestly I only have a resource if you're Canadian and that is PayTrie. Other than that you're on your fucking own but if you've ever heard about Google I'm sure you'll be fine.
In terms of "which ones should I get" there are three basic stablecoins that will pretty much get you to wherever you want to go. They are DAI, USDC, and USDT - listed in order from best to worst. DAI is the most decentralized, and is collateralized by a number of different assets. USDC is Coinbase and backed 100% by USD. Tether is *arguably* just straight shit but it's necessary sometimes because that's the world we live in.
Those three aforementioned stablecoins will open doors for you. There are a fucking plethora of other stablecoins options on the market but I these three are your bread and butter. And your bread and butter and shit, if you include Tether of course.
What Can I Do With My Stablecoins?
1. You can let them sit in your wallet doing nothing. Don't let your stablecoins sit in your wallet doing nothing. The end.
2. You can send your stablecoins to this address as a donation to me for writing this fucking amazing article. No matter what subject I write about it always fucking takes me like 4-6+ hours to write these articles. Also the butterfly effect of your donation will actually help to save the entire world from the coming apocalypse.
3. You can put your stablecoins into some sort of centralized exchange/wallet collecting a bit of interest. This obviously sucks because of that "c" word and you will most likely have to "lock-up" your stablecoins for a certain amount of time to receive the interest. If this option turns you on then I would recommend either YouHodler or Crypto.com. I had a significant amount of my stablecoin position in YouHodler receiving a steady 12% APY until recently when I discovered the yield-farming options.
4. You can do some yield-farming with different defi protocols which can potentially be the most profitable. Why is yield farming the best strategy? Yield farming your stablecoin/cash position is the best option because you can add liquidity to a variety of different protocols with a pair of stablecoins thus avoiding the potential of impermanent loss, while at the same time earning a portion of the overall transaction fees accrued from the liquidity pool while at the same fucking time being rewarded with a more speculative coin as a bonus. Honestly if you're not turned on at this point then get the fuck out of crypto right now.
How To Yield-Farm Your DeFi Stablecoin Savings Account
Like I mentioned above yield farming is the best strategy if you want to maximize your earning potential for your savings account/cash position in order to take advantage of market down-turns in the future. Aka buy that fucking dip. Currently there are a fucking boatload of different liquidity pools where you can add your stablecoin positions to in order to receive both transaction fees and farm some sort of native/governance token as a result. Charlie Sheen ain't got nothing on this type of winning. What an outdated reference.
YFII - Tutorial Here & Here
Step 1 - Deposit stablecoins into curve.fi deposit to acquire yCRV
Step 2 - Now go to https://dfi.money/ and click on stake, open the yearn option, and stake your yCRV tokens (aka curve.fi LP tokens)
Step 3 - Check your stats here and track your progress https://yieldfarming.info/yfii/ycrv/
Mooniswap - Farming Details Here
Rewards: 1INCH tokens once they are released
Step 1 - Figure out which stablecoin pairs are available to receive 1INCH token rewards in the link above. 1INCH token has not yet been released but the rewards will be issued retrospectively once the tokens are live
Step 2 - Go over to Mooniswap and deposit your stablecoins into the Pool section by selecting 'Add Liquidity'
Step 3 - Monitor the pool through the 1inch.exchange Earn interface
Bonus - This article explains why Mooniswap is just a little better than Uniswap
mStable Earn + Balancer Labs - Info Here
Rewards: MTA through mStable Earn and BAL through your BPT with Balancer Labs
Step 1 - Figure out which pairs are available for mStable's Earn function in the link above
Step 1.5 - Go over to mStable and Mint mUSD via depositing your stablecoins
Step 2 - Go over to Balancer Pools and find the pool you wish to add your stablecoins to or go directly to mStable to see a list of available pools with reward details (these numbers do not include the BAL rewards you will also receive from this method)
Step 3 - Once you have selected and deposited your coins into a balancer pool you will then automatically receive BPT (Balancer Pool Tokens)
Step 4 - Head over to mStable Earn to select your pool and 'stake' your BPT
Step 5 - Monitor your MTA rewards through the mStable Earn page and estimate your BAL rewards through predictions.exchange
Bonus #1 - More info regarding mStable Earn BAL rewards
Bonus #2 - You can also deposit mUSD into mStable Save to earn a very respectable interest rate in mUSD
Those three options right there are where I currently have my entire stablecoin aka savings account right now. Diversification is always recommended because of the inherent risks within different smart contracts so having your eggs in a few different baskets is recommended. It is also recommended, by me, that you seek out some information relating to the risks involved within the smart contract/defi space in general just because it's smart to do these sort of things even wen magical internet money go up make happy. Also keep in mind these interest rates fluctuate all the fucking time due to the supply and demand of liquidity entering and leaving the pools etc so make sure you are aware of that before diving in with little Sally's college fund. Sally if you're reading this; I'm sorry baby but I put a little too much faith in Carlos Matos.
Additional Resources:
Zerion.io - Portfolio tracker
Zapper.fi - Portfolio tracker w better farming info
1inch.exchange - Best DEX w cheaper gas option
Yieldfarming.info - Self explanatory
mStable.org - Everything mStable and mUSD related
Curve.fi - Stablecoin swapper extraordinaire
yfii.finance - The place to farm YFII
Mooniswap - Liquidity pools and DEX
Balancer Labs - Liquidity pools
Predictions.Exchange - BAL rewards estimates
Everything You Should Be Using In Crypto - My 4-part article series
