We are taking a look at the largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance and the options it has to earn income through various lending, staking and earning schemes.
We have had to pause our review however due to some regulatory activity here in the UK where we are based.
In the first instance the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned Binance from undertaking certain regulated activities, such as derivatives, futures and option contracts.
Then this week Binance stopped allowing withdrawals in pounds for UK customers, seemingly after its payment provider pulled the plug on it.
There is quite a lot of uncertainty at the moment about Binance’s position in the UK so we want to see how this plays out and what activity is allowed and what isn’t before recommending the review.
Hopefully we will have some clarity soon but it is a little unsettling that the FCA is taking a stronger stance against cryptocurrency so we may see other platforms hit with action soon as well.
We will update this page when we have further news with regard to Binance’s position in the UK and which of its schemes we are allowed to access.
Binance Lending and Earning – Results Update
23rd June 2021
We are taking a look at the largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance and the options it has to earn income through various lending, staking and earning schemes.
First up we tried out their “locked staking” option, which as the name suggests, involves locking up your cryptocurrency for a specified length of time to be used for staking.
We chose to stake Solana (SOL). Our contract was for 15 days and we locked up 3.4965 SOL. At the end of that period, we had earned 0.049 SOL, which worked out at a return of around 34% APY.
Next up we tried a higher risk but higher reward option of their “Binance Pool – Dual Investment.”
Here is Binance’s explanation of what this Dual Investment is:
“With Dual Investment, the user purchases a currency and final settlement takes place in either BTC or BUSD. Upon expiration, the final settlement currency is determined by comparing the price of the coin and the pegged price at the time of settlement. Dual Currency Investments is a non-principal-protected financial management product that offers floating returns. Although the rate of return is fixed, the final settlement is determined based on the settlement price and the pegged price.Therefore, the risk associated with Dual Currency Investments mainly lies in the high rate of market volatility. Users are advised to invest with caution once they fully understand the risks.”
And here’s a video from them explaining it:
We deposited 0.00138000 BTC at the start and received a final return of 0.00139822 BTC at an annualized rate of return of 60%.
So in itself that was good, but you obviously have the risk of the cryptocurrency you are staking in falling during the period you are investing, which is what happened to us here as there’s been something of a bear market recently with BTC falling from around $40,000 to around $33,000.
That’s why we’ve generally preferred to stake stablecoins in the other crypto platforms we’ve been reviewing here on the site.
So that’s what we will be doing next – although their DeFi staking is temporarily unavailable at the moment as they are doing an upgrade.
Binance Lending and Earning – Results Update
12th May 2021
We are taking a look at the largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance and the options it has to earn income through various lending, staking and earning schemes.
First up we tried out their “locked staking” option, which as the name suggests, involves locking up your cryptocurrency for a specified length of time to be used for staking.
In this case we opted to stake Solana (SOL), which had one of the better rates of return at around a 34% APY.
Our contract was for 15 days and we locked up 3.4965 SOL.
At the end of that period, we had earned 0.049 SOL.
That equates to around a 1.4% return, which would be around 2.8% per month or 34% p.a. which is exactly as advertised.
That’s an excellent rate of return and we were happy to take it. During the period of our contract, Solana itself also increased, rising by around 30%.
So we made an excellent return on that investment in a short space of time. Of course, it is always possible that the coin you are staking could go down in value whilst you are staking, potentially wiping out what you have earned in interest (in addition to the risks mentioned when opening our review below).
That’s why it can be a safer idea to stake stablecoins, although there aren’t any options for that on Binance at the moment, that we can find anyway.
We’ll take a look at some other options for staking then that we think make sense and report back in our next update.
Binance Lending and Earning Review
25th April 2021
We have started to take a look at some of the top cryptocurrency platforms and their potential to provide income via lending, staking and other related services.
We have recently started reviews of Crypto.com and the FTX Exchange, but today we are going to take a look at the biggest exchange of them all, Binance.
If you are familiar with crypto then you have almost certainly heard of Binance and may well use it yourself.
Binance has seen a meteoric rise since launching in 2017, and is now by far the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, with over $50bn regularly traded on Binance each day and over 30 million visits each week.
Although starting out as a platform to just trade cryptocurrencies, Binance now has a plethora of options for achieving returns including staking, lending, liquidity pools, yield farming and more.
There are almost a bewildering number of options available and some of them are a little complex so we will endeavour to figure them out and report back.
Some of the staking yields go as high as 34% APR which is obviously very good, whilst yield farming returns can be even higher but come with more risk.
As ever with the world of cryptocurrency, there are a range of risks to consider such as the exchange being hacked or having other issues, currency risk and what is known as “impermanent loss.” With high reward often comes high risk, as they say.
In any event, a platform such as Binance is well regarded and seems to be constantly innovating so it’s well worth checking out and seeing what kind of returns we can generate.
We will report back soon on how we are getting on, but in the meantime you can check out Binance for yourself here.
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