Crypto Earning vs. Savings Accounts: How You Can Get Up to 17% Annually Holding Digital Assets

The mainstream has caught a whiff of the gains cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum have seen, but many people are not aware of the passive income crypto users are getting as well. While financial incumbents are giving people with savings accounts a measly 0.35% to 0.60%, digital currencies can give people 1-17% or even more by leveraging certain tactics.

Crypto Returns That Outpace the Savings Account

You may have heard the term “make your money work for you” in the past, and that’s what savings accounts do if they earn a percentage of interest over time. Certainly, a person can be a bit riskier and invest in stocks and such but with a savings account, the money simply sits there and accrues a return over a period of time. The more money held, the more interest an account will get but these days banks don’t like giving interest. We can see that some of the top banks in the world will only give 0.35% to 0.60% returns according to the best savings account rates on bankrate.com.

Now you can do the same thing with cryptocurrencies and get a much better annual percentage yield (APY). A lot of centralized exchanges offer anywhere between 1-12% in interest for staking or holding a digital asset on the trading platform for a period of time. For instance, on the trading platform Coinbase you can earn 1.25% APY for holding USDC. Coinbase aso offers earning rewards for staking algorand (ALGO), cosmos (ATOM), and tezos (XTZ). These three coins see payout rates either daily (ALGO), every three days (XTZ), and once a week (ATOM).

People can also leverage the exchange Crypto.com, which gives customers up to 2% to 6.5% per annum (PA) for a myriad of cryptocurrencies and up to 12% for holding specific stablecoins. Crypto.com users can choose an interest rate by selecting a term which can either be flexible, one month long, and three months long.

Flexible means you can withdraw and use the cryptocurrencies at any time and you can get 2% for supported crypto assets and 8% for stablecoins. A 30-day term with Crypto.com gets the person 4.5% for the average crypto asset, while stablecoins will get up to 10%. 90-day terms accrue 6.5% for coins like ETH and BTC, and stablecoins like USDC can get up to 12%.

Coinbase and Crypto.com are not the only exchanges or custodial solutions that offer interest bearing accounts. Other interest-bearing products are offered by Blockfi, Linus, Outlet Finance, Gemini, Kraken, Youhodler, Coinloan, Nexo, and the Celsius Network. Each and everyone has different terms and interest rates depending on the crypto asset being held.

Most of these platforms offer higher percentage rates for stablecoins, as fiat-backed crypto assets can get savers larger returns. Of course, custodial solutions are coins held with a third-party, and people opting to gather interest in this fashion should understand there’s a greater risk. A custodial platform could fake reserves, get hacked, or even run the business into the ground by making poor business decisions. As the old adage goes “not your keys, not your coins,” so holding funds on an exchange means you are trusting them.

Leveraging Proof-of-Stake Tokens, Ethereum 2.0 Staking

Individuals who want to make passive income can also do so by leveraging noncustodial platforms and staking concepts. Staking involves using a proof-of-stake (PoS) crypto asset and the person needs a staking wallet to perform this function (validating transactions) in order to obtain stake. Similar to a savings account, staking simply means holding the asset and being rewarded coins for the amount the user holds. The more tokens held while staking, the more interest the user will obtain.

Currently, some people are staking ethereum (ETH) using the new ETH 2.0 staking feature. However, in order to earn ETH this way in a noncustodial fashion, the user needs a total of 32 ETH to participate. Although, the person can earn anywhere between 5% to 17% PA. People can also stake ETH in a custodial manner via exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase. The San Francisco exchange Coinbase gives “between 3-7.5% reward on any ETH that you stake.”

Defi Apps Built on Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Polkadot, and Tron

Additionally, besides staking, people who want to acquire yield-bearing returns on their crypto assets can do so by leveraging a decentralized finance (defi) application. There are numerous defi apps like Compound, Aave, Nuo Network, Ddex, and Dydx that can offer a person a return simply by providing liquidity or lending. A good portion of these noncustodial defi apps also provide higher yields these days for stablecoins.

Using these types of apps, people can earn returns based on a period of time with numerous ERC20 tokens like TUSD, LINK, DAI, ETH, WBTC, and USDC. Moreover, there are other blockchains that are moving toward creating defi ecosystems as well including networks like Tron, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, and Polkadot.

One example on the BCH network is the Anyhedge protocol developed by the General Protocols team, a concept that allows people to leverage BCH with the noncustodial application Detoken.

“The first product available on Detoken is the Anyhedge BCH-USD futures contract,” the team detailed when the app first launched. “This is a smart contract which allows users to Hedge or Long their BCH while earning funding premium. Users also retain control of their own money throughout the entire process.”

Make Your Money Work for You

All of the aforementioned platforms and tools offer people a chance to make their money work for them. Individuals can earn a return by doing something they probably were doing before they knew they could earn interest – simply holding. This decentralized form of liquidity will continue to grow, as long as the demand for crypto assets remains strong.

If mass adoption continues to increase, liquidity and potential earnings can only get better over time. Once the mainstream catches on to these massively larger interest rates, instead of the banks’ petty 0.35% to 0.60% rates, it won’t be long before they will want to move their funds into something that gathers real interest over time.