I have read this thread at the time it was posted and was very thankful for the pointers. So I decided to give few of the named platforms a whirl for investing, following are my experiences with these services.
Note that I was not interested in borrowing funds, but only in investing to earn some interest on my coins.
These are purely my views and factual experiences and neither investment advice nor any indepth reviews, just what I encountered while trying them.
Youhodler - https://www.youhodler.comSigned up and verified with ID for KYC. Asked their support a few questions about withdraw fees and was impressed with the speed of replies.
Initially I didn't get to deposit coins and after about a week I received the following mail from them, titled "Your account may be suspended":
Dear --,
It's been a few days since your account was verified, but we can't see the activity on your part.
We are forced to inform you that accounts that are not active may be suspended for the next three months.
Please top up your wallet to access our services without any time limit.
Ok, now that was conceived by me as very weird, threatening users with account suspension just because they didn't deposit early enough. For me this was the showstopper and I aborted my testing, deciding that I won't trust them any of my corn. Therefor I can't say anything about returns, withdraws or interest paid, but this mail totally turned me away from them.
Blockfi - https://www.blockfi.comSigned up and verified with ID for KYC. Deposited 0.1 BTC around 8th December 2019 and it was immediately credited to my account after confirming onchain.
According to their
FAQ I was expecting to see some interest paid to my account by end of December/beginning of January 2020:
How and how often is interest paid out?
The interest earned in your BIA will be paid out at the beginning of every month. BIA account holders will be able to access a history of their interest payments and view their total balance on their BlockFi dashboard. Interest is paid in the client’s deposited currency, meaning Bitcoin will earn Bitcoin and Ether will earn Ether.
Though on January 2nd I still didn't see any interest paid to my account and decided to end the trial with them so I issued a withdrawal request for my 0.1 BTC. They state on their website that withdrawals can take up to several days, they also sent out a newsletter saying that due to federal holidays loan and withdrawal requests may take up to 48hrs because - well they are on holidays. Interestingly they managed to send out three newsletters from 30th Dec to 1st Jan.
After more than 30 hours my withdrawal of 0.1 BTC still hasn't been processed, though meanwhile I got a mail reporting that I earned $2.72 for my investment from December 8th to end of month. Will update, if my withdrawal finally hits my wallet.
Quick divestment is obviously not possible at Blockfi and if BTC had pumped today I would feel pretty pissed.
On the positive side it has to be noted that the BTC withdrawal should be free of any tx or withdraw fees (offer valid for one withdraw per month, subsequent withdraws get charged a fee).
Blockfi seems to be affiliated or run by Gemini and I somehow would expect them to process withdrawals much quicker.
[Updated withdrawal status]: Not received (last checked 31 hours atfer requesting)[Updated withdrawal status]: Received my withdrawal (w/o any tx-fees deducted) ~36hrs after requesting itCelsius - https://celsius.networkHad been recommended from LTC foundation and here. So I decided to give it a try even so it can only be done with an Apple or Android phone as it soley comes as app. As I don't fancy any smartphone the missus had to try it together with me. Even we made sure to untick the checkbox that says that we want our interest paid in Celsius (we want LTC), we constantly got notifications about having earned some Celsius. Lost temper at some point with this fondleslab interface bullshit and withdrew the 5 LTC back to our wallet. This worked instantly and without problems. Bottom line: Doing serious business on a fondleslab is just monkey business, I can't really understand why people do this sort of things on little devices where one wrong swipe can lead to things going terribly wrong.
App my ass, that certainly was the last time I was doing such things on device that is primarily good for looking for sexpartners and shooting down angry birds.. (yeah, I am a lil bit mobe-agnostic as you might have guessed by now...)
Bitvest - https://bitvest.ioStudied the site as well as their
BCT thread and created an account (no verification needed) and deposited 1 LTC to see how it works. Within ~10 days with compounded interest that grew to ~1.03 LTC which I divested and withdrew. Worked like a charm, within moments the LTC was back in my wallet.
Meanwhile after the initial test I deposited and invested more and have got some nice gains from it. As their site allows API access to check your investments state it is very easy to graph what your investment does (example is a 0.1 BTC investment from ~Dec 10):
As can be seen above, there are times when you lose on your investment when somebody grabs a large win, after all you invest in the bankroll of the casino. Still over time this gave the best returns for me and I feel most confident in a service that has a thread here (and great trust rating).
Next I'll give
Crypto-Games a try, they also have a
thread here, their trust rating is also fine and they also feature an API to constantly check your investment w/o loggin into the site.
I personally definitely favour the casinos to get something out of my coins while I HODL (as in don't sell) them.
Again, I am not endorsing any of these sites/services at all, I am just reporting my experience.
Though if you would like to tip me for posting this, please feel free to use the below referral links when signing up to one of the casinos (I am done with the other ones):
https://bitvest.io?r=137121https://www.crypto-games.net?i=BNDI9s2BSVHTH