It was the summer of 2020. The DeFi scene was exploding. There were many centralized players luring customers to lend the collateral asset to their platforms. Nexo, Celsius and many others promised users to give 8-10% interest on BTC and ETH. Many crypto influencers promoted these platforms while claiming they are risk free and will remain solvent throughout. What happened after two years was that Celsius filed for bankruptcy and CeFi applications were laced with uncertainty.
This is my story on how I survived the Celsius debacle.
I opened an account with Celsius in the summer of 2020 after hearing about them on one of the crypto podcasts. I did not think too much about the platform as I was one of the newbies treading the crypto market. I was too naive to know “not my keys not my coins”.
I deposited my USDT, ETH and BTC in the platform wallet. Back then, it was a hassle for me to navigate wallets, transactions and rewards. I used to get regular updates on my weekly returns. The amount of BTC and ETH I had were not monumental. Like any other new users, I have a couple of ETH and less than 0.1 BTC.
After a few months I got bored with the return received. In the meantime, I also discovered decentralized finance. I got hooked on Uniswap when 
Venus was my choice of platform on BSC where I deposited my assets to receive rewards on XVS and native coins. It was much better than Celsius where I was relying on others to guard my coins.
Leofinance posts
I was one of the few users who followed Leofinance community members to ape into Rune back in the 30 cents days. Khal splashed 10s of thousands but I managed to own a small bag of Rune tokens. Guided by the @Leofinance posts, I noticed that there is value in keeping crypto assets in their native form as opposed to their wrapped versions. Community members pointed out how there is risk in every wrapping and unwrapping transaction.
The Rune plunge
It has now been 431 days since I plunged into Rune. I switched to RUNE to park my BTC earning yields on this cross chain platform. It has been more than a year now. I look at my small portfolio where I am enjoying fees on native token while providing LP on RUNE-BTC pair.
I am aware of the risk Rune entails. It may not go on to become the app it aims to be. But, it is far more risk free than keeping your assets on a centralised platform not knowing when you will be rug pulled.
I am glad that I pulled the plug on Celsius way ahead of time. I was not aware that they would go bankrupt like they did but I am glad that I found DeFi and Rune to park my BTC in its pristine form, at least.
Decentralisation is the theme of the next bull run. Get ready and be prepared to identify where you want to park your assets.