Leaving money sit idle is silly whether it’s USD, JPY, or even BTC. The same is true Bitcoin has a risk free interest on it.
Many people Hodl Bitcoin and don’t really use it, but they are missing out on earning some good, safe, and risk-free interest. Listed below, is a table of Bitcoin savings accounts around the world.
|
Website |
Trust Score |
Set or Market driven APR? |
Minimum deposit |
APR range |
Withdrawal |
Verification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
5 |
Market Driven |
None |
1%-20% |
Anytime |
None required |
|
|
4 |
Market Driven |
None |
1%-7% (Current 5.1%) |
Anytime |
KYC |
|
|
5 |
Market Driven |
N/A |
3%-5% |
Anytime |
KYC |
|
|
5 |
Market Driven |
N/A |
1%-16% |
N/A |
Passport |
|
|
5 |
Set rate |
1 BTC |
6.2% |
7 Days |
KYC |
Trust Score
Trust score is a subjective measure between 1-5 that we feel with our experience and knowledge represents the trustworthiness of the savings account.
1- Not trustworthy don’t use
3- Reasonable to trust
5- highest level of transparency, history, and security implying trustworthiness
IMPORTANT: r/Bitcoin. The best way to store your Bitcoin is in your own wallet. Depositing into a savings account requires you trust the website with your money, in return they give you interest. Always keep this in mind and never deposit all of your money in 1 place.
Why use a Savings Account?
There are many trade-offs in cryptocurrency. For example spending vs Hodling. If you store your Bitcoin very securely in a cold wallet you have very little security risk. But, at the same time, it makes it very hard to ever use that Bitcoin.
Where if you store it in a mostly secure online wallet, it’s very easily usable, but could potentially be stolen. Analyzing these trade-offs a bit further we have created a benefit and consequence table to compare trade-offs of keeping your Bitcoin in a savings account.
|
APR range |
Tradeoff |
Verification |
|
Tradeoff |
Increasing risk of loss |
|
|
Using BTC and supporting adoption |
Tradeoff |
Increasing risk of loss |
|
Increase velocity of money for Btc |
Tradeoff |
Increasing risk of loss |
|
Making Btc more of a money and less gold |
Tradeoff |
Increasing risk of loss |
|
Your not that good at storing BTC anyway |
Tradeoff |
Still probably safer in your own less secure wallet than someone else's more secure wallet. |
Top Bitcoin Savings Account
Btcpop.co
Btcpop was chosen as the best Bitcoin savings account because it is the easiest to use. No KYC! No hassle. just deposit your BTC and watch it transparently earn interest. Btcpop.co is a 4+ year old cryptocurrency platform with a disclosed cold wallet to cover user balances as well as high cryptocurrency exchange grade security. So it is user friendly to use, and secure (2fa highly recommended).
CryptoROI.com also feels Btcpop.co bet represents the ethos of Bitcoin with its P2P loan market. Bitcoin is P2P money, so a P2P loan market with few restrictions open to users around the world is right on point. How the savings account works its pretty cool, you can read more about it via their blog post. But what it amounts to is Btcpop giving out instant Bitcoin loans at set terms, and then taking on that repayment risk, but giving the interest to depositors. So the APR% depends on how many people are taking out and repaying instant Bitcoin loans.
Upon researching the return rates it does look like there is quite a lot of variance. During the boom it was as high or higher than 15% APR, however during bottom of the bear market it was only 1-2%. Regardless, 1-2% Bitcoin appreciate is better than nothing, and with Btcpop’s low withdrawal fee option, you get to keep the interest your coins earn not pay it in network fees.
Other Contenders
Celcius
Celcius.network is a very cool cryptocurrency app. It offers collateralized cryptocurrency lending and a relatively high interest rate for its “savings account”. While not named a savings account earning interest on deposits without counter-party risk is effectively a savings account by our definition.
Celcius provides a nice service to its users, and the actual cryptocurrency is held by Bitgo, so, it is very secure. The reason we gave it a subjective 4 of 5 for security is because they deal with USD, but, did an ICO. This means sometime in the future they could fall into trouble with the USA government which has been very anti cryptocurrency, especially with ICO’s or anywhere the USD is involved.
LedgerX
LedgerX is regulated, and, services the institutional client. One cannot even create an account without KYC and passport information. The interest rate (at a implied volatility) is approximately 16% which is really quite good. However, with lower volatility recently for the Bitcoin price a significant decrease in APR can be expected. Overall secure regulated service with a long history.
Blockfi
Blockfi is was a high quality candidate, but the reason it didn’t win us over was the long and drawn out withdrawal process combined with a rather high withdrawal fee. Bitcoin is about controlling your money, and with Blockfi, you really don’t have much control of your Bitcoin at all.
Uphold
Uphold is a fantastic service and has many different currencies, cryptocurrencies, and even precious metals. But, to us it seemed like the Bitcoin savings account feature is kind of an afterthought and it is not very straightforward or simple to use on their platform.
Overall, if you are willing to make the tradeoff, there are some good options for growing your Bitcoin holdings in a low risk savings account like matter. If you are on edge about opening an account with one of these services, our advice is to do it and just try with a small amount. You never know if you don’t try. And if you keep most of your Bitcoin in cold storage (recommended) then it doesn’t hurt to grow you hot-wallet holdings.