My personal experience from using CEFI platforms in last 2 years

CEFI is pretty strange term, but it comes out as normal definition after DEFI, since companies that runs CEFI projects/websites are centralized and registered as fiscal entities. DEFI on paper have all possible advantage and the major one that will everybody point out is “You hold your own keys”. That is completely true. On other hand, reality is that there are more and more scams in DEFI space, since there is zero control of who is running those DEFI projects and zero due diligence before they get listed usually on uniswap. With CEFI there is a different picture, and those projects are companies, backed up by funds from institutions and having large amount of assets under management. I started putting some of my coins, mainly BTC and ETH back in 2018, and I will share now with you some of my experience. In any case, this is my experience, my way and I am not giving you any type of financial advice. The only advice I will share with you is that you NEVER EVER put all your assets in ANY project, no meter how good it is and how good income it provides. 40% was and stays max that I ever put outside my own ledger wallets.

I will start with crypto com, they are the oldest, and as they state, they are biggest if you count customers – like 5 million. I personally do not believe it is that much, but I am fairly sure that they have more members than other CEFI platforms. I started there by end of 2018, when they were still MONACO (MCO). I heard by that time that they purchased domain crypto com few months before me joining and I saw that as bold and long term move. I did not start there to earn interest, I wanted to have their MCO atm card. And I get my pretty fast delivered to my office in Singapore. I am Irish, early retired in Thailand, and I have few offices across Asia and EU. Crypto com did not have crypto interest accounts until May 2019, and it was not well accepted with members, since they offered just locked options, 1 and 3 months. After that test, week later, they presented to some of us via email their FLEXIBLE term rates, just for BTC,ETH,PAX,TUSD,LTC and XRP. APY% was pretty low, 2% and 4% if you hold MCO token. I tested it, it worked fine, and steady 4% was nice at time. Six months later, they start to throttle, my interest earnings were late or in few times inaccurate, when I write to support it was always longer than 48h, sometimes whole week until they reply – which is unacceptable. I removed my coins from interest accounts and leave just enough MCO coins so that I can have my crypto card operational. I am still using crypto com atm card, it is now backed up with CRO token, even the name is still MCO.

Things I like about crypto com: Their atm card – the only one currently working from CEFI platforms. Mobile app looks very nice and it is by far best mobile app from all CEFI platforms. Long in business and legit.

Things I do not like about crypto com: They slow support response, more than 48h and sometimes whole week. Their registration country – Malta – my lawyers tell me it is hard to sue and win any Malta based business in case of any dispute. Their low interest rates.

Second one in list will be Blockfi com. I will be short on this one, since they are pretty straight forward. I heard about them at start of 2019, they did interest accounts actually long before crypto com, in late 2018. Back then it was 6.2% APY on BTC for first 5 BTC and 2.2% after that. I started there with 5 BTC, and withdraw half, when they lower their rates to 6% for up to 2.5 BTC and 3% for more than 2.5 BTC. Blockfi is nice app, they are pretty OK at support, reply within 24h, sometimes 48h but that is really 1 in 10 case. They are legit company registered in USA, and they just announced their atm card, which I believe they will deliver in 2021 Q1.

Things I like about blockfi com: Their interest rate of 6% on BTC (up to 2.5 BTC), Their support response of 24h, rarely 48h. Their USA company registration, which allows me to chase them with my lawyers if anything goes wrong

Things I do not like about blockfi: They support just 8 coins for interest accounts, they slow withdrawal – every time it took more than 24h, one time more than 48h. They payout monthly. They allowed some clients information breach, when they get hacked back in May this year (https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertanzalone/2020/06/16/blockfi-hires-new-chief-security-officer-after-last-months-hack/?sh=13c9dbe24c57)

Third one is Celsius dot network

Celsius is biggest one my assets under management. They got audited few days ago with chain analysis, and all 3.3 billion USD AUM are confirmed. I was BIG fan of Celsius from mid 2019 till last month. There was a period when I hold and earn interest there on 12 different coins and stablecoins at a time, back in January. Then as many other services, not only crypto based, as they grow – they degrade their service quality and lose focus on core business. When I started there, back in July 2019, they were focused on crypto borrowing and interest accounts. Their CEL token was secondary thing and just a nice side earnings for those who participate. In recent days, they are 95% focused on CEL token price and how to maintain the same by pumping it on Uniswap and Liquid to keep price up. I am 100% sure if they ever get listed on Binance or Coinbase like CRO token is, CEL price will go down like a broken parachute. That is why they avoid more listings, covering it in phrase like they do not want to pay for listing – they want to share that with users. I found that funny, since now most expensive Binance listing is 50 BTC, and that is for tokens which are suspicious, for legit ones you can list between for 10-25 BTC. Celsius claim that they pay more than 2 million USD interest per week, so those 10-25 BTC will really not make any difference. Anyway, I withdraw half of my coins from there back in July this year, when I saw that my withdraw took more than 48h after me sending 3 emails to support. Rest of my assets I withdraw last month, on November 14, after they resolved their DNS “issue”. We all learned that 3.3 billion company hold their DNS records at godaddy private user account, which is cheap move. And it was scary moment when NOBODY could access their assets for almost 48h. I left some CEL token there, just to watch how long they will continue to pump. Celsius is legit company. Registered in UK, (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11198050) . UK laws are the only one that are harder than USA laws, and there is no joking there, trust me, being Irish I know all. But there is one question I asked my lawyer about incident when I lost access to app due to DNS “issue” – in case of any of those platforms do the same, and just vanish, I am left with no hard evidence that I was holding anything there, since it was all online and via mobile access. Even if I take screenshots, they cannot proof anything, we all know screenshots can be fabricated. The only way to sue and win is if you have trail, signed paperwork, or even email full statements are ok.

Things I like about Celsius: Number of coins they support, their high APY interest rates, their low crypto borrow APR%, Their transparency

Things I do not like about Celsius: Their slow support (above 48h on average), They compound weekly and pay out weekly. Them pushing members to buy OTC their CEL token , on daily basis – look like desperate. The way where they expose everything around ONE person, Machinsky, which is completely not secure – if something happen to him, they will collapse.

Fourth one is my current favorite, apyharvest com. I say current since this is crypto and anything anytime can change. Apyharvest do noly crypto, no fiat at all. They all calculate in USDC, not in USD. I started with them in January 2019. Back than they were harvest investment, and services and IP restricted only to UK customers. They operated just in Northern Ireland and some parts of England and Scotland. My house in Dublin was 3 streets away, and I developed pretty strong relationship there, even with few of my visits in person to their offices. They switched from harvest investment to apyharvest and opened new site apyharvest.com few months ago to start slowly spreading around world. I say slowly, since they do not do any type of marketing except referrals from their existing customer base. I have currently there more than 15 different coins, my biggest chunk is still in BTC, ETH and USDC. I mine directly there, so all my BTC, ETH, LTC and XMR rewards go directly to my miner account addresses which are permanent, and then once daily they are moved to my interest account and start earning APY% interest next day. I get all transactions on daily email reports, very precise and clear, per coin and per type of tx. Apyharvest do not offer any platform to access for end users, they main point is security – where there is no platform – there is simply nothing to be hacked. Instead of that they offer next best thing – personal crypto bankers, real persons which communicate with clients in more professional way than banks. And they are available 24/7 and I can confirm they ALLWAYS reply in less than 12h (in my case 4h on average). Every withdraw I made was also in less than 12h. Each member gets one personal crypto banker, in some cases maximum 2. I got 2 pass phases from start which I do not keep on email, and they are there for any withdraw and in case that something happens to my personal email account. Interest payments are daily, interest compound daily, and I can withdraw whatever I want whenever I want. For persons that do not like to do strong ID KYC, since they are only crypto, under UK AML law, for any transaction bellow 15000 GBP basic KYC is enough – that means Name, Surname, date of birth, phone number, Address, Country…no ID scan or ID call. For transactions above 15000 GBP you need to do KYC with photo IDs. I needed to do EDD (enhanced Due Diligence) since I reached Tier4 , which is offered ONLY to Tier3 members via their personal crypto bankers.

Apyharvest is legit, they are registered in UK (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC415569) , they provide clear and easy to read email statements which are good proof if you need to open a case against them on UK court.

What I like about Apyharvest: Their support which reply always in less than 12h. Their fast withdrawal which is always in less than 12h. Their high APY% rates. Their support for almost 50 coins. Their miners interest accounts. Their ability to open up to 7 close family members under one account.

What I do not like about Apyharvest: Confusion they make when they switch from harvest investment (closed to UK) to apyharvest (worldwide) – I get backup of all my communications from their new emails. Their silent approach – I try to understand why they do not advertise more (in my question about it to my personal crypto banker he reply to me that company target is to scale by not losing quality of service).

The last one I will mention there is NEXO io. I keep them for the end, since I want you to double think before open account there. I will not show you all details I have, you need to do your own research. I will show you just this: Nexo did successful ICO on March 2018, in peak of most of the ICO scams. You can see there all team in slides as pictures (https://icodrops.com/nexo/) Top names are: Kosta Kantchev, Georgi Shulev, Antoni Trenchev, Vasil Petrov, Kalin Metodiev, Kamen Trendafilov, Bilyana Christova, Plamen Todorov, Teodora Atanasova, Joro Yordanov, Boris Delev, Ivan Kostov and so on. All BULGARIANS. Now I will not have so big problem with that (even they present themselves as Swiss and UK company) – my problem and my lawyers problems are when you go to terms of service for loans and borrows – ( https://nexo.io/earn-terms , https://nexo.io/credit-terms ) you just look CLIENT section III 1.2 in both – YOU ARE NOT CITIZEN OF BULGARIA – that means Bulgarians providing services for everybody outside Bulgaria. RED FLAG. I will rest my case here.

I did not left any referral code here for any of these services. I would like VOSK to earn by referring them since he deserve it by making this nice forum for his followers.

Hope you find this info educational. Cheers.

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Quality Content we are looking for!

Good Job mate and Keep it up in the near Future

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Thank you @MRV for nice comment.

I will share now what I am doing on CEFI, beside simple earning interest by holding coins there.

I am sure that most of users, new and even old ones, are not doing crypto borrowing at all, using their collateral, or at least not the way I will explain to all of you now. If you know what you are doing, it is highly profitable and fairly easy.

You need first to select coin that you hold and for which you are VERY POSITIVE that it will raise in price at least double in next 365 days. It is not so hard, in current times, most of Top 100 CMC coins did it, and not only 2x but much more.

You do not need to hold that coin currently, but if you are bullish about it and have funds – just buy it!

All good CEFI platforms I mentioned above do crypto borrowing based on crypto collateral. But there are some differences between platforms that you must consider before you start. Most important is that coin you are bullish for is available for borrowing. Also, that APR% rate is not so high. Plus, that you can take stable coin as loan based on your bullish crypto coin as collateral. And of course – NO HIDDEN FEES!

Considering all this, Blockfi is OUT, they support only BTC, ETH, LTC and PAXG as collateral, they have “Origination Fee” 2% and their APR is high – 9.75% for LTV 50%

Crypto com is little better, but again, small amount of coins they accept as collateral – CRO, BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, XLM and EOS for which they offer loans in PAX, TUSD, USDC and USDT. If you stake 25000 or more CRO, APR is 8%, if not then very high 12%

Celsius network is much better than previous two mentioned – they support above 25 coins as collateral, and they offer TUSD, GUSD, PAX, USDC, DAI and USDT as loans. The problem is only that their borrowing is not available 24/7 , many times it gives application error or it is simply not available. Their APR is 7.95% for LTV 50% and 3.95% for LTV33%, if you apply for stablecoin loan. If you would like loan in their own CEL token – then it is lover – 5.67% and 2.77%.

Apyharvest com is what I use, since they support 50 coins as collateral and you can take loan in any of coins they support, including stablecoins. Their APR is 5% for LTV 50% and 2.5% for LTV 33%.

As you all probably know, LTV 50% means that you need to put for example 2 ETH to get 1 ETH loan, and LTV 33% means that you have to put 3 ETH to get 1 ETH loan.

Now back to what I do and how I made nice profit with this all…

I will give you best tutorial just by stating my 2 currently active loans with apyharvest:

By end of November, I was (and I am still) pretty bullish on THETA and XMR. I believe both will double if not triple their price in next 3-6 months, and I am like 99% sure that they will go 2x in next 365 days.

So I take this 2 loans which are still active:

On 28.11.2020. I put 50000 THETA as collateral, on 1 Year term, LTV 33% and APR 2.5%. At that moment price of THETA was 0.612 USDC. So, my total collateral was around 30600 USDC. For that I got 10186 USDC loan, in less than 8 hours. The reason why I did not get exact 1/3 of my collateral is simple price change for THETA in those 8 hours. There was no originating fee, no transaction (gas) fee, no processing fee etc. For those 10186 USDC I manage to buy additional 16652.3 THETA. Now I seat and wait my desired price ( I go double – so 1.25 USDC per THETA) . When it reaches that price, I will settle my loan in FULL (need to pay just days passed from start of loan – no penalties) and by my calculation I should earn NET around 10500 USDC

On 02.12.2020. I put 300 XMR as collateral, on 1 Year term, LTV 50% and APR 5%. At that moment price of XMR was 126.17 USDC. For that I got 18892.74 USDC loan, in less than 10 hours. For those 18892.74 USDC I manage to buy additional 149.12 XMR same day. Now I seat and wait my desired price of 253 USDC per XMR . When it reaches that price, I will settle my loan in FULL and by my calculation I should earn NET around 18500 USDC

In next table you will see my progress in all this from March 2020, when market was down and I was certain that it will all recover.

Hope you all find this text informative.

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These articles are very detailed and informative i always wondered why people took loans and i still don’t understand it very well but i hope your future articles will explain them . Keep up the good work :+1:

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Thank you for your feedback @Yacob_Tsige !

About crypto loans that I described in this post, it is much easier to understand them by acknowledging that those “loans” are not like in fiat word, and like most of loans in general - when you NEED money so you put as collateral your house, or subject of lease, or part of salary.
These crypto loans are for those who have EXTRA crypto (or fiat ready to be converted in crypto) and even they are still technically “loan” ( you put your crypto as collateral to get stablecoins to buy more crypto), you should look at them as investment.
As I described in longer text above - when you have a feeling or info or just feel bullish for price of some coins that you hold or plan to buy - like I have currently to THETA and XMR, just put them as collateral and buy 50% more of them with stablecoins you get as loan. And wait. As you can see from table, sometimes is fast - 30 days, sometimes it take 100+days, in some cases you are wrong (like I did for VET in July). When you reach your targeted price - get out of loan (settle it fully) and you are in pure profit. Ask whatever is not clear - I will explain here - when I have time. Cheers :beer:

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Yesterday I received Christmas present from THETA, price raise steady, still do, but to pick up my profit I ended loan at apyharvest and sold at 1.32 USDC. That made me fastest 27 days profit from loan since I am doing this.

I made 11775 USDC based on 50000 THETA I placed as collateral at LTV 33% and APR 2.5% which allowed me to get loan of 10186 USDC and buy with them 16652 THETA when price was 0.612 USDC on 28.11.2020. I still have XMR loan ongoing, but that one as planned will be mid term, probably 3-6 months. I am sharing my updated loan table progress here.

With USDC I just earned, I bought ZIL and deposit it on my apyharvest interest account so from tomorrow I will start to earn 19.37% APY on that coin too.

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hello Thomas,

I was wondering how your experience with apyharvest is today ?
I tried to do some research but not that much is there on the internet.

I only found the same article you written above on medium.

The only thing is that the author is different :

Can you explain ?

Are there other members with apyharvest experience ?

Hello @jaccovdk,

My experience with apyharvest is great - both in fast support and features. And of course, APY% are great. On plus side, security wise, they are only one from above mentioned that have never been denied service for customers at any time 24/7/365 . I was huge fan of Celsius until Q4 dns attack occurs and when I was unable to access my funds and login to app for more than 48h.
As I mentioned, I am holding part of my crypto at apyharvest since January 2019, and back then they were only available to UK, and IP restricted for outside access. I visited their offices few times, meet them in person, they were 3 streets away from my home, back in Dublin. I am now early retired in Thailand, but i still keep my two personal bankers that were handling me from beginning and cover my 24/7 requests.
Advantages that I can point from Apyharvest to other platforms are:

  • ALWAYS reply in less than 12h (in my case average 3h or less) , and after that 1st reply if you engage in conversation, they reply in minutes which is normal
  • I opened crypto savings account for my 3y old son, 8 months ago, not the option with crypto com ,blockfi, celsius or god forbid nexo
  • Withdrawals are always in less than 12h, they cover all transaction and gas fees for withdrawals above 300 USDC in value
  • Their KYC is “soft” for all deposits smaller than 15000 GBP (which is ACTUAL UK LAW, so basically when others ask you for photo id card or you holding it for proof, it is not so requested by law, they just like to keep personal data, which is security issue all the time ( I hated when blockfi got hacked and my data there compromised)
  • They support in-account crypto swap’s with no fees, since day one they started global ( they opened global site and offer services to all worldwide users in June 2020)
  • They cover now 60+ coins. On top of that I mine my XMR and ETH directly there
  • Interest on Apyharvest is earned daily and compounded daily. And nothing is locked, you can withdraw at any time.
  • They listed SNX in July 2020, that is like 3 months before Celsius, and their APY% for SNX was and still is 23.54% for Tier3 users. I did not heard about SNX until i got personal message from my personal banker at Apyharvest, and their special offer for Tier3 users, I jumped in, price back than was $2.50 per 1 SNX, now it is stable above $25, so imagine my profit plus interest.
  • Few weeks ago, they did same thing for Avalanche (AVAX), and offer 26.35% APY . I jumped in again, as soon as i get email, price was $13.5 per 1 AVAX, and now just two weeks later, AVAX is stable above $40 and expected to breakthrough Top10 coins on cmc. That means above $150 during 2021…and on top of that I still earn huge 26.35% APY interest.
  • They also have in interest accounts available : ADA, DOT, THETA and many other strong coins , that celsius is promising to their users for months, but failed to deliver. For ADA particularly celsius claim it is some “platform developing/upgrading” issue , while ADA is available on Apyharvest even before they go global.
    So all this time, my Apyharvest experience is great, and I hope they will last at least until my son 18 year savings account is closed lol. One more mark, celsius do not offer loans longer than 3 years. Apyharvest have crypto savings plans, crypto retirement plans and crypto loans all available for 20 years period. I call that stable and long term plan.

Hope you find this info as good information. Cheers.

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Hello @ThomasK ,
Do you know what happen about apyharvest these 3 days? many investors do not receive statement and no response from banker?