Bitrue Progress Report (Free) 📈
HODLer's Den By Aromatic (Free Version)
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Disclaimer: Nothing in this report constitutes investment advice—I am just reporting on my accounts and its progress on each platform. You should not use this report to make financial decisions. I recommend you seek professional advice from someone who is authorized to provide investment advice.
Hey everyone and welcome to the HODLer’s Den!
Here you will find information on my crypto investment portfolio straight from a HODLer’s perspective. This section will focus on HODLing cryptos and interest-earning platforms.
Bitrue
The last four weeks in crypto have been amazing—even as I am writing this report I am super stoked to find out how much my Bitrue investments have grown since the previous report. But first off, let’s dive into some recent changes and updates with Bitrue.
Adoption Of Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
After the burning of 100,000,000 Bitrue (BTR) Token back in July, the price of BTR dropped from a high of 0.70 USD down to 0.50 USD and has been hovering around there ever since. The White Paper 2.0 did mention hybridizing the platform from solely CeFi (Centralized Finance) into a CeFi/DeFi platform and so far I have noticed the changes.
Bitrue updated all ERC20 wallet addresses, so if you have whitelisted any old address for Bitrue withdraws and deposits I highly recommend you update them accordingly. Regardless, I am super paranoid when it comes to using saved addresses so I normally triple check that the address is accurate before I initiate any transfers. The updated ERC20 addresses might be one of the first indicators of DeFi adoption, possibly making them compatible with Smart Contracts.
The main reason I like Bitrue is the Power Piggy, just another name for staking on Bitrue, because they provide some of the best Annual Percentage Rate (APR) across the four major interest-earning platforms that I use. Aside from high APRs, they are also quick to add popular tokens and stay up to date with current market trends. As you know, the DeFi space in crypto is on fire and Bitrue recently added several new tokens to Power Piggy.
As you can see, the APRs are phenomenal but note that these rates are only good for 30 days as a promotion. However, you can still deposit all of the tokens on to Power Piggy at a lower rate. Honestly, the non-promotional APRs in Power Piggy are still one of the best in the industry.
Chainlink (LINK) 7.3%
Cardano (ADA) 3.8%
Zap (ZAP) 4.3%
VeChain (VET) 5.3%
Divi (DIVI) 7.3%
The 7.3% APR on LINK is insanely good—I do not know if any other platform can match it. Using this convenient Crypto Interest Rate Tracker, the next highest APR for LINK is with Crypto.com but it requires a 3-month lockup period as well as 10,000 CRO (Crypto.com Token) to be staked. If you have a decent position in LINK, I highly suggest you consider putting some into Bitrue’s Power Piggy.
In addition to providing wonderful APRs on DeFi tokens, Bitrue is also listing new DeFi tokens for trading. They recently listed LEND (Aave), but it is only paired to USDT (Tether).
Another upcoming listing is Curve DAO Token (CRV) also paired with USDT. I have a small position in CRV which I earned from providing liquidity in some of their liquidity pools about a month ago.
It looks like Bitrue has started to accept deposits of CRV and will begin trading once enough have been deposited. I just checked Bitrue’s exchange and CRV is still not active as of writing this article.
I notice that Bitrue has plenty of pairings with USDT which is great if you want to diversify your crypto portfolio, but I wish they had used USDC (USD Coin) instead because it would provide a seamless way to use USDC purchased from Coinbase. You can exchange USDC to USDT on Bitrue, but you will be paying the exchange fee and slippage which I find ridiculous since it should be a 1:1 conversion for stablecoins.
Power Piggy
Bitrue’s staking, Power Piggy, is great but know that it comes with certain caveats.
I will use the ADA Power Piggy as reference to explain each column.
The Interest Rate is currently 3.8% APR for ADA deposits in Power Piggy. Interest is paid out daily. Nothing much to say here as it is straightforward.
Next is the Lock-up Period which can be confusing for newcomers like it was for me. With Power Piggy, you must “lock” your investment or freeze them while they are deposited. Although your assets are locked up you are free to unlock or unfreeze them at any point in time. The term “Unlimited” means you can lock up your investments indefinitely—basically forever unless Bitrue makes any adjustments. If you use Crypto.com, you can think of “Unlimited” as a flexible investment term.
Sometimes, Bitrue will have a promotional rate for certain tokens—7% APR for ADA in this case. In this example, the Lock-up Period is 30 days even though it is listed under Power Piggy. In this case if you lock up your asset, it will be locked for a 30-day period and you cannot unlock it until the term is complete.
The next column is Total Cap, which is a major caveat when using Power Piggy. Every day, Bitrue unlocks or releases a limited amount of tokens to be made available to the community for Power Piggy. Once the cap has been reach, the community cannot deposit anymore funds into Power Piggy for that token—you must wait until they unlock the next cap. For example, the Total Cap for the promotional 7% on ADA was 4,000,000 so I am not able to deposit my ADA because the cap has been reached as indicated by the Remaining Cap column.
If we look at the 3.8% ADA, the Total Cap (VIP Included) column indicates that Bitrue releases 600,000 ADA every day at 10:00 UTC+8 which will be available for anyone to deposit and earn interest. I am on PST time which means I would have to be up at 3:00 AM in the morning to take advantage of Power Piggy. Even then, there is a possibility that the 600,000 ADA will get sold out quickly depending on demand. As you can see, ADA is currently Sold Out meaning no one can deposit ADA into Power Piggy until the next cap release.
A way to bypass the daily Total Cap is to own BTR tokens. Each BTR allots you 0.20 USD worth of Power Piggy cap for any of the tokens available. For example, if I own 1000 BTR I will generate my own VIP cap of 200 USD. Unlike the regular cap, the VIP is generated on a weekly basis. The VIP cap of 200 USD allows me to invest into Power Piggy at my convenience. Since ADA’s price is currently 0.138 USD, I have a weekly VIP cap of roughly 1449 ADA—take 200 USD divided by ADA’s price to get the VIP cap. You can apply this formula to any token.
As you can see, by owning BTR I have a personal VIP cap of roughly 270,000 ADA. Even if the community cap is Sold Out, I still have the luxury to deposit funds into Power Piggy generated by the VIP cap.
The next column is My Investment and is straightforward. It indicates my current investment, in this case, 6640 ADA tokens.
There is also a minimum required to deposit assets into Power Piggy and it varies with each asset. For example, you need at least 100 ADA to participate and deposit into Power Piggy.
That wraps up Power Piggy. I will discuss Bitrue’s Lockup investment, which is different from Power Piggy, in a future progress report. If you have any questions regarding Bitrue’s Power Piggy please feel free to leave a comment and I will try my best to answer them.
Interest Earned
As of this report, I have earned 4063 USD from Bitrue’s Power Piggy—not bad considering that I only started truly using Bitrue sometime in April/May 2020 because of the promotional rate on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). In the last 4 weeks, my Power Piggy portfolio grew by 2025 USD—a 99% increase in value. You can use this Google Spreadsheet to track my earnings on the four major platforms I use.
Below is my earnings from Bitrue’s Lockup. So far, I have accumulated 2764 USD in interest and I could not be happier. In the last 4 weeks, this portfolio grew 79% resulting in an extra 1221 USD in earnings.
Overall, my Bitrue interest earnings grew 91%, netting me a total of roughly 3246 USD. It is a nice chunk of passive income for HODLing cryptos and I look forward to watching my portfolio as it continues to grow.
Conclusion & Prospect
With the recent changes to the Bitrue ecosystem I am conflicted. The BTR burning was supposed to motivate the team but so far they just made adjustments to Power Piggy and Lockup. In the past, each BTR generated 1 USD worth of VIP cap but now they reduced it down to 0.20 USD—a massive 80% decrease. Each BTR also was worth 0.50 USD worth of Lockups but that has been reduced to 0.40 USD. Again, I understand why they made the change, but by reducing the value of what BTR offers they are hurting loyal users and it also seems like a lazy way to increase demand for BTR.
The changes to the ecosystem barely cause BTR’s price to change—it reached a high of 0.70 USD right before the burning and now it has been steady at 0.50 USD. Hopefully the slow hybridization with DeFi will cause BTR’s price to soar. I do like that they offer phenomenal rates for DeFi tokens so I cannot complain there. This will attract new users onto the platform who may buy into the BTR ecosystem and help push its price.
My assets in Lockup have been reduced because of the change in BTR’s value from 0.50 USD to 0.40 USD. I am considering shifting excess BTC and ETH back onto Crypto.com now that I have the Icy White Card tier so I can earn the extra 2% APR in CRO. You can read my previous progress report here. For now, I have my excess funds parked in Power Piggy while I contemplate the decision.
I believe Bitrue is heading in the right direction—adoption of DeFi—and only time will tell. I will keep my current assets on the platform to diversify my assets across interest-earning platforms. Once the demand for and price of BTR increases, they will need to make more adjustments to the ecosystem to accommodate the changes. As a HODLer, I will continue to compound my interest and let time take care of the rest.
Each week I will report on a different interest-earning platform that I use—mainly, Celsius Network, Bitrue, Crypto.com, and BlockFi.
If you do not have an account with Bitrue and would like to support my work, please use this referral link. Click the link to register and invest in Power Piggy, it will let us both earn interest together! Much is appreciated!