Member-only story
3 Strategies for earning income on Bitcoin now that Celsius, Nexo, and BlockFi left the US
The US SEC recently punished BlockFi with a $100 million fine for selling unauthorized securities in their interest-earning product. BlockFi responded by immediately ceasing to offer its lending and borrowing services to new US clients and by grandfathering existing investors on the platform with their current deposits. Soon after, two of BlockFi’s biggest competitors, Nexo and Celsius, followed BlockFi’s lead and were turned off for new US customers. However, Celsius does offer their product to accredited investors, so if you are lucky enough to be in this status, you can still swim in their pool.
One of the biggest allures to owning crypto assets is earning an easy passive income by lending it out and being able to borrow against the assets. Unfortunately, the SEC’s harsh penalty scared everyone out of Dodge, and these platforms have decided there are enough fish outside of the US to support their business. Earning upwards of 10% annual yield on US dollar-backed stablecoins seemed too good to be true, and the government shut that option down. Don’t fret; I just got an email my high yield online savings account interest rate went from 0.4% to 0.6%. If I'm fortunate, the extra 0.2% might buy an extra Monster energy drink over the year, maybe a fancy Starbucks coffee or a Big Mac Combo.
