Coinlending sounds quite wired at the first sight. Dealing with crypto currencies is still seen as a very “dark chapter” of society. Just people without bank accounts use crypto currencies. And as today it is soooo simple to get a bank account, those guys must be criminal. That is what society mainly thinks you cryptos.

When the Bitcoin peaked back in 2018 to nearly 20.000 USD in value everyone was talking about a bubble – a bubble from the criminals of course. And then it dumped back to 3.000 USD within a short time. God bless, this hype about the crypto currencies was over and we might get back to normal – society says and you were able to read it anywhere in the news. Today we have 2020 and the Bitcoin is back again at nearly 40.000 USD in his value. Where the heck does this come from?

Crypto coins as an alternative to usual banking

I do not want to dive too deep into cryptos todays as the main idea of this blogpost is coinlending. But if you do not know nothing about crypto currencies you might check the web. I learned my knowledge mainly from Julian Hosp, who is a german author and investor. He wrote a very good and easy to understand book called “Cryptocurrencies simply explained – by TenX Co-Founder Dr. Julian Hosp”.

Keeping it rough and short: Crypto coins are the possibility to transfer “money” from A to B without third party to control it. Coins are based on the blockchain-technology, which replaces the bank. Every transaction is written into the block chain. And this data is available to everyone in the system. Every crypto currency is a closed system itself, which is quite similar to todays currencies. If you want to exchange Bitcoin (BTC) into Ripple (XRP), you need to go to an exchange.

Also cryptos are not that popular here in Europe, they are used for example in Asia or Africa. There people have quite big struggles to open a bank account. Having their “money” on the mobile phone with an app is easy for a lot of people, as most of us have such an mobile phone. Additionally some political systems make it very hard for people to earn wealth and stake it on their bank account. Here crypto currencies are offering an alternative, which is completely “free of charge” and not regulated by a third party.

Holding crypto coins does not generate any interest

Back in 2017 when the cryptos experienced their first attention in public, I wrote a small book about it. In cooperation with someone we explained, what crypto currencies are, how the blockchain works and how to invest into this asset class. To be honest, most of the possibilities were quite shady and windy, but that is always the case if something new comes up.

I opend an account at kraken.com and tranferred 200 Euros to it. I bought ten different crypto currencies and staked them in my account. With those experiences I wrote the chapters of the book and forgot about the money. In Januar 2018 I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Cryptos experienced some massive attention as the Bitcoin raised its value to 20.000 USD per coin. I checked my wallet: 1.700 EUR in value! Wow, that was the first time I really made myself of how to generate interest from the coins.

Here in Germany crypto currencies are handled as money. So if you hold your coins, your win will be taxed when you sell it within one year. As I always try to avoid taxes I was willing to hold the coins for at least that year. Well, and during 2018 the value dumped again back to 200 EUR. During this dumping phase I invested another 300 EUR into crypto currencies. And I found some possibilites to generate interest from those coins apart their increase of value at the exchange.

Coinlending with Celsius Network

In the beginning of 2020 I wrote a post about coinlending with Celsius. The idea behind Celsius is nearly the same as with P2P lending. You are staking your coins, similar to your savings. And while this money is lying around, you might lend it to someelse who needs it. Whether it is a privat person or a company is not important. At the end you will receive interest from it, as you will be paid for lending money or coins.

Celsius is a digital platform, mainly an application on your smart phone. You open your account (wallet) and from that moment on, you are able to send your crypto coins to the wallet. Technically your wallet is a sum of several wallets, as you have a wallet for Bitoin, Ripple, Ethereum and so on. The same as with you bank account, where you can not have EUR, USD and YEN in one account, but on several sub-accounts.

Open your Celsius account, stake 200 USD and receive a bonus of 20 USD here

Their interest rates are changing weekly, whereas the change is quite small. It depends mainly on how much this or that coin is needed. Choosing the popular ones coinlending will generate you an interest of somewhere between 3% and 5,5%. There are some exotical coins I never heard of, which does not mean anything, where the interest rates climb up to 10% to 12%. Especially if you want the interest paid in CEL, their own coin, interest rates are a bit higher overall.

But let’s not just concentrate on Celsius but on the whole area of coin lending and whether we will find alternatives. And there are 🙂

Interest and additional grants as a passive income

Making the coins of a platform count in the overall coinmarket, you have to work towards an active coin. That mainly means, that you coin is needed, traded and exchanged. As there are a lot of coins it might be a little bit difficult to get things going. It is more or less the same with a start-up, who wants to implement their solution on the big economic field. So, what do you? Right, you try to get customers by additional grants. And that could be nearly everything. Buying a new TV you will receive the soundbar on top; buying a car, you get any inspections for the first 5 years on top – and getting your coin to an initial amount of liquidity those companies choose similar methods.

#1 Celsius Network – Coinlending with up to 10% interest

Celsius is one of the platforms offering coinlending. Borrowers who need coins will be able to lend them. But as an investor you do not know what they borrow it for. That is one of the major differences to P2P lending, as you can not see where your coins go to. It might be for business, but it might be possibly anything else.

Technically seen you are also not the owner of those coins. As the block chain is private there is a quote, which is important: “The one who has the keys, owns the coins”. There is no possibilty of getting them back on a usual way. You can not call the coin exchange like you might call your bank accountant. There is no one, just independet technique, which is working on itself. If you transfer your coins to another wallet, the one who owns the wallet, owns the coins.

Open your Celsius account, stake 200 USD and receive a bonus of 20 USD here

Honestly, you have to know about it before starting with coinlending. A cryptocurrency is a great chance for the future, but lending works in a different way than with P2P lending. Especially if you check the law aspects of it – if there are any. Investing into P2P lending you will be most of the time the owner of the loan-share. So your share is secured by collateral and others assets. If the loan fails, you will be able to bring the borrower to court and try to get your invested amount back.

Not knowing where your investment goes, there is no one you can take to court with coinlending. And usually those loans are not secured by collateral or anything else, which might give you a safety. Here the difference between risk and reward is very easy to see. And if you are not familar with it, you should not work with coinlending.

Celsius is probably one of the biggest coin lending platforms as they published 8.4 billion USD in loans from 254k users. Their CEO and founder Alex Mashinsky was born in Ukraine, but living in the USA today. Since 1997 he is more or less into the cryptocurrency topic having founded several companies. Beside Arbinet he was also involved in Transit Wireless, Novatel and until today at Celsius Network.

#2 Coinloan – P2P lending platform based on coin lending

Coinloan is a coinlending platform from Estonia. It is mentioned on their website, that you are able to transfer your coins to the platform and lend it. Technically the platform organizes this lending for your as you do not have the possibility to choose your preferred loans. So it is working like a fund quite similar to Bondora Go and Grow, where the platform theirself organizes the lending process. Whatever assets you transfer to your account will be lend, no matter they are crypto coins or fiat. But you need to check before if Coinloan is accepting your coin. Otherwise you might exchange it before.

Additionally to this earning option, you might also apply for a loan here. As collateral you will have to stake a similar account in cryptos at Coinloan. But you will be able to paid a loan in fiat to maybe pay a bill, which you cannot pay in cryptos. Additionally this also works like a pay day loan, where you do not want to sell cryptos for any reason, but lend it until your fiat money arrived at your bank account again.

Currently I am not invested here, as I am mainly working with the other platforms here. As Coinloan is situated in Estonia and acting like a P2P lending platform I wanted to mention them here. Maybe I will get my account here in the future, but currently there is no need for me. Additionally their average interest yield is great with 8,3%, but nothing for me at the moment. For anyone wanting to diversify their P2P portfolio in Europe also among crypto coins, Coinloan seems to be a good alternative.

#3 Crypto.com – Cashback and even more bonus

You might know Crypto.com as their sign up bonus was quite popular. Meanwhile they lowered it to 25 USD, which is still very attractive. But, lets start in the beginning: Crypto.com is something like a payment platform. The are offering VISA credit cards you are able to pay with worldwide. By directing this traffic their platform grows. To attract customers even more, the offer additional bonus like your Spotify or Netflix plan paid back to you in their own CRO coin.

If you are paying with card, you will earn another 1% cashback with the smallest card (which gets up to 8%). To qualify for this cashback and bonus, you need to stake 2.500 CRO coins in your wallet and fix them. That is, depending on the value of the CRO, something between 200 and 250 USD at the moment. If you re using Spotify with a plan, which is around 120 USD per year, you will get it back from Crypto.com, additionally paid the sign up bonus of 25 USD and 1% cashback with your card.

That sounds quite attratictive, as usually you do not receive cashbacks on your card payment. And of course you are able to put your card into Paypal and stuff like that, so you are able to make internet-payments also with this card.

Register at crypto.com with my link and receive 25 USD upon ordering your VISA debitcard

#4 Swipe.io – Easier entry for cashbacks + bonus

Swipe is probably the same “thing” as Crypto.com. They have their own SXP coin and you are able to order a VISA creditcard to pay your stuff with. But here is now, why this might be more interesting for you: You only need to lock 300 SXP, which is around 250 USD. After locking this amount you will receive your first creditcard. There are several cards available, all depending on what you want and how many SXP coins you want to lock. With your card you receive 2% cashback and everything what is booked on it.

Additionally Swipe is paying your Netfix, Amazon Prime and Spotify rates. If you sum this up, it is an amount of 38,97 USD per month (Netlix 12,99 USD, Spotify 12,99 USD, Amazon Prime 12,99 USD) or in my case 380 USD per year (Amazon costs 69 USD with an annual payment). So let’s calculate: 300 SXP coins x 0,73 USD (10.01.21) = 219 USD. As I was using Netflix and Amazon Prime before my personal interest here is: 219 USD / 224 (without Spotify) USD = 97%.

Of course, this one is calculated very “easy”. But after about one year Swipe repaid me all of my costs which I initially invested. Maybe the SXP coin is at zero then, but is that really realistic? I mean, Swipe belongs to Binance which is one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide.

Coinlending is getting more and more interesting

I would like this post with a short conclusion. Coinlending is by far nothing you should bet a lot of your investments on. I wrote this blogpost for about one week and had to correct the Bitcoin value several times from 20.000 to meanwhile 40.000 USD. This shows how volatile the market of cryptos is. There is a lot of movement and momentum in it, but it is more visionary than elementary value. Maybe the Bitcoin drops next week down to 10.000 USD again or also maybe rises to 100.000 USD – I dont know!

For me cryptocurrencies are something I want to have in my portfolio. I believe in this technique and I am pretty sure it will rule the world sometime in the future. Currently it is mainly volatile and nothing to bet on. In my personal portfolio cryptos were always weighted with about 2-3%. Currently and due the fast rise of the value, it is somewhere at 7%.

With Swipe and Crypto.com I am using two debit creditcards, which are paying my expenses from Netflix and Amazon Prime. I am happy as long as this works and I wont be unhappy, when they cut those costs. Hopefully it will take a lot of time to come to this point to have the biggest possible impact on my personal expenses.

I dont know where coinlending will go the next years. As interest and increasing value never comes from very good circumstances but a certain risk, I will stay invested here and be happy for any month my costs are paid and I receive and interest payment from Celsius.