This is a follow-up tutorial to yesterday's article on what LENDING is and why I think it’s so useful for crypto-beginners. Here is the link for your reference: LENDING - A low-risk way to let your crypto money work for you.
In this tutorial I am assuming that you already have an account with Poloniex, funded with some Bitcoins or Satoshis. If not, then do that before you read on, or save this article for later :)
Funding your LENDING account
In order to place a LENDING order, you first have to transfer your funds (or a part of them) from your Exchange account on Polonix to your Lending account. This takes one second and works like this:
- Click on Balances and then Transfer Balances in the top menu.
- On the next screen, select from “Exchange” to “Lending” in the two drop down fields on top.
Then enter the amount of BTC you want to transfer in the Amount field in front.
If you want to transfer all of it, just click on the amount that shows in your BTC Exchange balance in the list. This will fill in the Amount field automatically.
Then just click on the grey Transfer button on the right. Done!
Now place your first LENDING order
- Click on LENDING in the menu on top.
Once on the LENDING screen,
- On the right, you will see the list of currencies that you can lend. Including your balance per currency.
- On the top left you see which currency you have selected right now. This is Bitcoin in this case. I find that the interest rates are usually highest here.
- Below that you see the loan offers that are currently active (by others), what interest rates they ask for, the amounts they offer, and for how many days.
When you place your own order, you can ask for any amount of interest you like, however the closer you are to the others currently on offer, the sooner your order will go through and you’re actually earning interest. There is no point in it just sitting there and waiting to be filled.
I normally scroll down one or two screens and choose an amount from there. These orders move so quickly that they get filled pretty soon.
All you have to do is fill in the interest rate you want, and the amount you want to offer, and then click on the grey button "Offer Loan" on the right. DONE!
Your order will now appear under "My Open Loan Offers" further down the screen.
0.0826% means what it says. Don’t get confused by all the digits after the comma
0.0826% is less than 1% ;)
1.000% would be 1%.
But remember, you’re receiving this amount per day. If you offer a Lending order for 2 days, you will receive this amount twice. You can do the math how much that would be per month.
I have been able to get 1.999% and even 2.000% once. This is very rare. Compare this to the banks, where you get 0.1% per year at the moment. And this is per day!!
I think my lending orders have been averaging between 0.0700% and 0.1500% so far.
How many days should I pick for "duration"?
The minimum is 2 days.
During this time, Poloniex will keep renewing your loan and use it to fulfill the orders of different lenders. After the 2 days, the amount will be released back to you and it will appear in your "Lending Balance" again.
You can choose to make your loan available for a longer duration, though.
I do that when the interest rates are really high. Then I want my money to receive this high interest for as long as possible without having to check it constantly.
Here is my strategy:
- If the interest rates are low, I choose 2 days.
- If they are high - above 0.1500% - I make them available for 5 days.
- If they are super high - 1.000% or more - then I select 60 days, in the hope they’ll stay active as long as possible.
- If there is a lot of movement, I'll split my available amount and place 2 or 3 different loan orders for different interest amounts - see image below
Can I change a loan order once I have submitted it?
No. But as long as it still appears under "My Open Loan Offers" you can easily cancel it, and create a new one. It takes 10 seconds.
Once your order is active, you can't change it anymore. As you can see in the following image, the "Cancel" link on the right has disappeared.
What you can do instead, is disable the "Auto Renew" function and change it to "off".
This way, your funds will be available again as soon as they are released by the current lenders.
In the above image of my active orders you can also see that they sometimes get split. If you look further up under my "open orders", you'll see one for 0.0770% in the first line. That one got fulfilled a few seconds later and split in three, as it appears in my "active orders" now.
Should I always use the "Auto-Renew" function or not?
That depends how often you want to check into your lending account. I use it by default.
However I do switch it off for existing orders every now and then (as mentioned above), mostly in cases when I notice that the interest rates have gotten much higher in the meantime. I don't want my funds to be stuck in 0.05% orders, when I can now get 0.15% for them.
How to check your stats and earnings
- Go to Orders / My trade history in the top menu
- On the next screen, click on “Complete Lending History” on the top right.
- This will directly download a .csv file, which you can open in Excel.
- Just sum up the total of the column “Earnings” in order to see what you’ve made so far.
That's it! Now you have convenient way to let your money work for you.
And it only takes a few seconds every other day to check in and see if you have to take any action.
Caution!
I want to emphasise again here, that you should not leave too much money on an exchange.
Should the exchange get hacked or the owners run away with your money - there is nothing you can do. You do not have the private keys to your funds and therefore won't be able to recover them.
Poloniex is a trusted exchange in the industry, but still, you never know. So please play at your own risk and always know how much you can afford to "play" with.
What is your experience with LENDING?
I'd love to hear from you!
Also - in case you spot any mistakes in my tutorial, feel free to point them out, so I can correct them.
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About the author:
Anja Schuetz is a Customer Service & Operations Management Consultant and Coach. After a career in the corporate fashion world, she now supports conscious solopreneurs and small businesses with money- and business management. And she's morphing more and more into a tour guide through crypto land, especially for women.