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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.
BlockFi
Updates
BlockFi Appoints Yuri Mushkin as Chief Risk Officer (CRO)
Mushkin will oversee the firm’s enterprise risk management strategy and operations, encompassing its fast-growing institutional and retail businesses.
As BlockFi expands its trading, lending, custody, and asset management functions, he will be tasked with ensuring that the company’s risk framework continues to meet the rigorous standards of institutions and regulators.
According to BlockFi, Mushkin brings over 20 years of capital markets experience across the buy-side and sell-side, where he focused on enterprise risk, portfolio management, and analytics.
With Mushkin as the new CRO, former CRO Rene Van Kesteren will focus solely on his work as General Manager of Institutional Services, a role he concurrently held while building the company’s risk management framework from inception. Â
BlockFi Founder and CEO Zac Prince on Conversations with Regulators
If you use BlockFi then you should have gotten an email within the last couple of weeks regarding regulatory investigations into the platform.
BlockFi has a multi-faceted retail and institutional business, but the recent regulatory focus has been on the BlockFi Interest Account (BIA). We have been engaged in a productive discourse with regulators to protect your interests and expand accessibility to innovative financial solutions for all. This is our commitment to you -- to fight for your rights to earn interest on your crypto assets.
The New Jersey Bureau of Securities (NJ BOS) has further postponed the effective date of its previous order to Thursday, September 2, 2021.
According to Prince, the NJ BOS’s order calls for preventing the creation of all new BIAs.
However, it has no impact on current BIA clients or any of BlockFi’s other products.
The BlockFi Rewards Visa Signature Credit Card is Now Available for All Eligible US Residents
After being on the waitlist since the announcement of the BlockFi Rewards Visa Credit Card earlier in the year, I finally got my card about 3 weeks ago.
I got an email to confirm some additional information and to get approved for the credit card.
It took less than 5 minutes to complete the entire process and I was approved instantly.
The card arrived within 5 business days and activation was a breeze using your BlockFi account login.
The card came neatly packed in a cardboard envelope and inside you get this:
You pull out the tabs to reveal the BlockFi card itself:
This is the backside of entire package:
And here is a close up of the BlockFi Credit Card:
I was expecting the card to be metal like Crypto.com’s Visa debit card or Apple’s titanium credit card, but it is heavy-duty plastic.
The BlockFi card feels way more durable and is heavier than traditional credit cards as it is harder to bend.
Metal cards suffer from printing quality—my printed name on my Crypto.com card is almost gone due to heavy use since it is rubbing off. The icy white coloring of the card is turning into a metallic color on the edges also due to wear and tear.
The BlockFi credit card earns 1.5% cash back in Bitcoin (BTC), but there is an introductory incentive of earning 3.5% cash back within the first 90 days capped at 100 USD in BTC rewards.
Yes! In addition to earning an unlimited 1.5% back in Bitcoin on every purchase, we’ve included additional ways to earn even more Bitcoin. Check out the new bonuses below and read our blog for more details! These additional rewards include:
Intro bonus:Â Earn 3.5% Bitcoin rewards on all purchases in the first 90 days of card ownership after activation, up to $100 in Bitcoin. To reach the full $100 cap would require at least $5,000 in USD card spend.
Trading bonus:Â 0.25% back in Bitcoin on all eligible trades, up to a maximum of $500 in Bitcoin each month
Spend bonus:Â Earn 2% back in Bitcoin on every dollar over $50,000 of annual spend. Rewards rate increases from 1.5% to 2% after $50,000 of spend has been achieved and resets on the card anniversary date every year.
Refer-a-friend bonus:Â $30 in Bitcoin for every client referral, on top of the base Refer-a-Friend program
Originally, the card release was planned with an annual fee of 200 USD, but it has been removed due to competitors stating that their cards would have no such fees.
They also planned on increasing the yield for stablecoins in your BIA if you renewed your card annually but that has been removed since there is no longer an annual fee.
I hope in the future they add the perk of increased yields in your BIA when using the BlockFi credit card.
Here is a summary of my credit card use in the last couple of weeks:
Even though I have accrued rewards, I am unable to redeem them. This is normal like most credit card reward points as it can take several bill cycles for redemption.
You will earn 1.5 reward points for each $1 purchase on the card. Your total number of reward points will be redeemed for an amount of bitcoin on the redemption date each month (for each reward point, you will earn approximately $.01, denominated in bitcoin on the redemption date). Reward points have no cash value and may not be withdrawn or transferred. The amount displayed here is an estimated amount based on the current price of bitcoin and may or may not equal the actual amount of bitcoin paid on the redemption date depending on fluctuations in the price of bitcoin.
If you are interested in joining BlockFi, please consider using my referral link/code. Thank you!
Interest Earned
It has been 4 weeks since the last BlockFi report and during that time my portfolio gained roughly 2500 USD in total interest paid. I track my progress with each lending platform using a Google Spreadsheet.
Bitcoin (BTC) is currently at 43.4k USD while Ethereum (ETH) is at 3050 USD. Both of these assets make a majority of my BlockFi portfolio and it is clearly reflected in my portfolio. Both of these assets have rallied recently and they both have a strong impact on my interest earnings.
However, as a HODLer I can usually ignore market fluctuations and continue to accumulate and compound my earnings.
Conclusion & Prospect
If you have been following my BlockFi account, you may have noticed my account balance dropping a significant amount. I transferred enough Bitcoin from my BlockFi account into my Ledn account to maximize the yield potential.
With BlockFi’s tier system, I am only earning 4% on my first 0.25 BTC and that is roughly how much BTC I will put on BlockFi. You can check out the Interest Rate Tracker to find the best yields across the platforms that I use.
The rates on BlockFi are still better than what traditional banks can offer. However, they are slowly dipping to those extremes with the lowest tier. A lot of other platforms will offer more than 0.25% APR on your ETH or BTC. But also remember that BlockFi does not require you to own a native token to access high APRs so you must weigh the benefits yourself.
I see many platforms shifting to a tiered system like BlockFi. Celsius Network uses the tier system for its BTC and ETH as well, but the rates are higher. Ledn also uses a tier system for its BTC, but rates are also better. Even with a tier system, both Celsius Network and Lend are able to accommodate a higher amount of BTC.
Ledn allows you to earn 6.1% on you first 2 BTC while Celsius Network allows you to earn 6.2% on your first 1 BTC. Compared to BlockFi’s 4% on your first 0.25 BTC, this is a large gap and makes me question sustainability.
The release of the BlockFi Visa Credit Card has revitalized my hopes in the platform because they currently have a product that no other crypto company has for its users. They have first mover advantage and should focus on improving upon the credit card.
My BlockFi credit card replaced my Citi Double Cash. Although the Citi card earns 2% cash back rewards, I am happy earning 1.5% back in BTC because it is such a convenient way to dollar cost average (DCA) into BTC. It also works synergistically with my BlockFi Interest Account because the redeemed BTC goes into my account and starts accumulating interest.
While I do enjoy earning 5% cash back in CRO with my Crypto.com card, I am trying to take advantage of the introductory 3.5% cash back in BTC with BlockFi’s credit card. The reward is capped at 100 USD in BTC and I have 3 months achieve this goal. Basically I have to spend about 2800 USD within the first 90 days to maximize my rewards.
I am a bit concerned with the regulatory investigation into BlockFi, but at the same time I think everything will be fine. BlockFi is a large company with plenty of institutional investors. I highly doubt they will back down without a fight.
The focus of the investigation is in regards to the BlockFi Interest Account and plenty of other crypto companies offer similar services so I believe BlockFi should be fine. Also, crypto adoption is progressing nicely as more companies accept crypto payments.
I want BlockFi to succeed because a crypto company dying is a huge blow to crypto adoption and the crypto community—especially a big company like BlockFi. Competition in crypto is also a good thing: BlockFi would have kept the credit card annual fee, but removed it after Celsius Network and Gemini announced zero annual fees for their credit cards.
As a HODLer, competition also keeps APRs competitive across crypto platforms so I can enjoy fat yields—not as high as what DeFi has to offer, but still a safer alternative.
What I Am Doing
This section is dedicated to paid subscribers as I will go into details of what moves I am making with my interest-earning portfolios.
You are currently reading the Free Version. If you would like more information, please consider switching to a paid subscription.
Each week I will report on a different interest-earning platform that I use—mainly, Celsius Network, Bitrue, Crypto.com, and BlockFi.
If you are new to crypto or have considered joining new platforms, check out the Starter Pack created by CryptoOneStop by clicking here or if you want to earn over 250 USD in referral bonuses then click here.