Bitcoin Forum

Does anyone use Binance saving account? They pay interest over bitcoin and altcoins held on your account there, although the rates for bitcoin are insanely low in flexible savings category, while in activities category the rates are decent. Unfortunatelly as I see the second category is unavailable.

Do you have experience with this kind of investment there? Were you able to join the activities category investment? What is your review about it? Or are there another solid platform offering better options?

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I haven't tried using Binance's or any other platform that provides yield. Why? I'm not a fan of handing over full custody of my coins to an exchange or any other platform. Due to the simple fact that exchanges get hacked, and while them locking up user's accounts aren't that common, it's still a lot more common than most people think and I definitely wouldn't want to be a victim of that.

I'm not totally against these kinds of services though. Just remember to not allocate 100% of your holdings, keep the risks in mind, and don't be surprised if something bad happens to your account and your funds.

Nope i haven't tried it either. I don't too like to "lock" my money on their savings because how if bitcoin or other currency price skyrocketed suddenly? I can't sell my money because it still locked on there and i will miss the big chance to sell on the peak.

Better safe than sorry, don't easily believe with other kind of investment which telling you they will give you bigger return than binance. IMO i don't think the %return from binance is small tbh.

Too much risk for a measly 5%. Centralized, glitchy, KYC-prone exchange pawning off your bitcoins to some nebulous "activities", what could possibly go wrong.

These APYs are terrible. If you're going to handle your coins to a third party, at least do to one that pays better (and are way safer) like Celsius or Blockfi.

If you want to risk more but also earn a lot more, take a look at some of the big ETH or BSC yield farms (eth: Compound, Aave; bsc: AutoFarm, ACryptoS, etc...). Always DYOR and please be aware of the risks.

As always with these kinds of services, I encourage users to take a look at the Terms of Service to see what they are actually signing up for. It is never just as simple as "Deposit your coins and earn interest". There is always a catch. Let's take a look:

So, the funds you deposit are given out to other users and third parties as loans. Lots of risk there from failed repayments, loan defaults, bankruptcies, scams, etc. "Other businesses" handily incorporates literally everything else in the entire world. They want to use your deposit to buy shares? They can. To buy property? They can. To YOLO in to some penny stock or shitcoin? They can.

And a little bit further down:

You unconditionally accept the risks. If anything goes wrong, Binance hold absolutely zero responsibility for it going wrong. All the risk is on you. If an investment goes bad, Binance take zero hit but you lose your money. If a borrower doesn't repay the loan, Binance take zero hit but you lose your money. If the platform is hacked, Binance take zero hit but you lose your money.

There's an awful lot of risk there for very little benefit.

Despite the good reputation of Binance, they rarely assume the risks. Before you do anything, they tell you that you bear full responsibility if you lose your coins. So I don't think I'm going to keep the money there.

In addition, if your account is not verified or you do not intend to provide your personal files, it is better not to use them because at some point they will request your personal data.

I admit I do keep some balances there. But that's only because cumulatively, if I was to withdraw them I would lose quite a lot in fees and dust inputs.

The flex yields are not bad if you want to move them again immediately but try to wait for them to release long term ones so you can lock it in for higher profits.

I have over $50 from maybe 2/3 years now in interest and that's because crypto went up again:)

Although my choice is Binance as a centralized trading exchange for trade, I wasn't familiar with any kind of investments nor I am interested. I am not a big trader, even I am always worried about my funds there. So I can't invest there for interests. Never-ending the return is big or small. However, I didn't notice it before you wrote here. Because I simply enter there and just open spot trade. Other features aren't for me (for a simple trader) and I don't involve with them.

I like Binance as an exchange but being a savings place for my coins, I wouldn't take the risk for that low interest rates. I won't hand over any amount of bitcoin there for that savings option. But probably if I've got some of those altcoins on that list that I don't much worry about, maybe it's worth to try.

I'll keep my bitcoin on my hardware wallet than to put it there. There's no interest rate that I'll get per year but I'm leaning to the rise that it gets from time to time and probably another breakout for a new ATH coming soon. That's easier and convenient.

Binance offers crypto secured loans that are structured similarly to how loans in the lending subforum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=65.0) work, the borrower puts up 1xx% collateral of one coin, and receives a loan of another type of coin.

You are right though, this language is very broad, and Binance could expand into other, more risky businesses while your coin is tied up in "activity".


It would be unusual for an exchange to give lenders a 'haircut' when a borrower is unable to fully repay their loans. The last time I remember this happening was poloniex I believe in 2019, and this was because the losses exceeded their reserves. I believe it is most common for exchanges to have reserves to be able to temporarily take over margin positions until market conditions improve, and/or to cover losses up to a limit.

If lenders had to take a haircut every time a borrower is unable to repay a margin loan, the rates lenders would demand would be too high for borrowers to want to use the platform.

They are the only ones who would really be benefiting out of those savings feature that they do had because it is really an advantage for them to make more money than on paying out those interest
to those users who had been using that savings feature this is why i dont really care on how high or decent their returns been offering because nothing beats out when you do just simply holding
off your coins in your own wallet without worrying yourself about exchange hacks or exit scams and that will really be giving you some nice sleep every night rather than on thinking
that you do have some bitcoins into other thirdparty.

For average users like you or me, then sure, we are required to put up collateral, but I would be surprised if Binance didn't offer preferential packages or rates, with reduced or absent collateral, for large business or institutional customers.

I don't disagree, and I also expect that if Binance suffered a loss they could absorb then they would do so, like they did with the $40 million hack back in 2019. However, the fact remains that there is absolutely zero requirement for them to do this, and the customer is accepting the full risk of loss. Any support Binance gives in such a situation would be entirely to protect their own reputation and profits, not because they are bound to assist their users.

Thanks, that is what I was also looking for. I knew only Nexo platform, but it's good to see similar sites to have the option of splitting the funds. Celsius pays 4,06% yearly over bitcoin (base rate) and Blockfi I'm not able to register yet because sign ups are blocked today for maintenance it seems. Let's see on the next days.

These terms are indeed very shady. But as they are a centralized business running in different countries, could they present such terms without any guarantees for customers? If they hypothetically scam investors' funds wouldn't they be sued by local authorities from the countries where they operate? I see similar situation with CRED investment site which scammed everyone claiming bankruptcy, but the case isn't finished yet and there are investigations and law suits running.

It's a pitty to see a platform like Binance which is ready to replace banks in general, as it offers all the same services, not presenting decent terms to give total security to its customers. However I think a scam is very unlikely, even because they offer too low interest ratings (1%). That is total advantage for themselves.

I'm sure larger customers can have access to reduced interest rates, but have doubts as to if they would be able to get unsecured loans absent some strong alternate form of guarantee such as a letter of credit, or loan covenants that can be enforced easily by binance.

I think this is usually the case with most exchanges and has been since bitcoin's early days. Even if an exchange has clauses saying that the exchange is guaranteeing against default risk in their TOS, most exchanges have been located in locations in which customers will have difficulty enforcing these clauses in court. Take MtGox for example, they filed for bankruptcy in 2014, and here we are in 2021, and their customers have still not recovered all available assets of Gox.

It is the Wild West in crypto land, and customers of an exchange should weigh the risks the exchange will be unable or unwilling to honor deposits with the potential for possible profit resulting from depositing coin on an exchange.

It's not Binance scamming that I would be worried about, which I agree is incredibly unlikely. Rather, it is the loss of your funds through the very methods being used to generate profits. If someone they have lent your coins to doesn't repay, goes bankrupt, scams, is hacked or robbed, etc., then you assume the full risk of loss. If they invest your funds in stocks, shares, ETFs, a start up, an altcoin, etc. and that investment loses money, then you assume the full risk of loss. Maybe Binance will cover it on your behalf, but there is no requirement for them to do so, and you simply have to hope for the best.

I don't keep up with Binance, but haven't they split their business in to multiple entities? US, global, Malta, Bermuda, Jersey. Does anyone actually know which one is handling their savings accounts? I suspect they have been deliberately vague about the whole set up.

I have used Binance both flexible and locked savings. If you have and have use same option in fiat bank accounts, then you wont see anything new here.

I had NEO and EOS in locked savings and received my interest daily. Had USDT in flexible and locked savings plan. It is good that you can close your flexible plan in just few clicks and get your assets back in seconds. As to locked savings - like people said, the % is extremely low. I was able to put 100 USDT for a 30day lock period and got around 50 cents. Even 90day lock wont give much.

I dont know this USDT locked savings even exist. You can only lock 100 USDT (but you may lock as many as you want of these "100 USDT package") and get 2 dollars in a quarter. Of course, "the money must work", but trading with 100 USDT during a month might bring you more than 50 cents profit.

Yes, there are some risks, like CRED loans and investments platform I said before. They declared bankruptcy, but investigation discovered it was due a non paid loan by the own associate of CRED's CEO which had exited the company to start a new one in China. So there is suspection CRED wasn't a victim, but a partner of the defaulter to harm the investors.
If a big business like Binance starts lending money without guarantees and investing in altcoins, stocks, etc in a risky way the first assumption would be that they are in collusion with the scammers or fake projects. It's a very unsual situation yet, not possible to have sure how the law would apply on these cases, but at least in CRED's case the justice took the suspection I mentioned above in consideration, what is good in my opinion and doesn't give many chances to scammers to avoid their responsabilities.

The 5% product is almost always oversubscribed, and the 1.2% one provides an absolute joke of a return.

I think that if you were to trust a centralised entity anyway, you might as well do margin lending on major exchanges as opposed to invest on Binance - you are likely to get at least 7-8% p.a. returns if not somewhere in the double digits.

Honestly, what seems more attractive to me than the BTC savings product is the USDT product - 6% p.a. is quite attractive by any means, actually higher than some of the p2p lending platforms even. Compared to only 1.2% on BTC savings, this product actually seems somewhat intriguing for the rewards that it offers, since you'd already be trusting a central institution in the first place by using USDT.

Just my couple of Satoshis.

You want to do savings, it better be done in the safest ways possible. Definitely, that does not include handing it to someone else.

Forget about that very tiny yield. It cannot pay for the risks and the possible troubles along the way.

I once got involved in such stuff. There was a sort of a rebranding or a restructuring whatever and they're changing tokens. They give the clients a few months to do the swapping. I was not monitoring everything. I missed the deadline. Funds are gone. This is not your case. But, surely, there will be all kinds of troubles along the way.

You better keep your savings to you and you alone. Just stack Sats. It's probably more worthy.

The agreement for their savings account is here (https://www.binance.com/en/support/faq/360032559032). It is not clear as to which specific legal entity the customer is entering an agreement with. Maybe it would be the one their Binance account is associated with.

The problem with that being that you are earning 6% on USD, which is rapidly devaluing with trillions more being printed near constantly, as opposed to earning interest on BTC. If you put $1000 in to USDT a year ago and earned 6% interest, you would have $1060. If you put $1000 in to bitcoin a year ago and earned no interest at all, you could have bought around 0.16 BTC, which is now worth $8640.

And that's without all the additional risks that come with holding USDT, given that it is centralized, can be frozen at any time, is not backed up 1-to-1 as claimed, and its parent company is running a fractional reserve system.

You would certainly assume so, but I suspect Binance would find a way to fudge it in their favor if there was ever a legal challenge against them for some reason.

I have changed my mind about Blockfi. If anyone is considering using them, read this first and be aware of the potential risks: https://ditchblockfi.com

Like all the others here I have second thought of holding my coins in Binance because you are surrendering your control on your coins, even if it is profitable I don't know if it's worth the risk, I would like to be responsible on my coin and face my own risk then putting it in an exchange for a period of time.

This is wild if true. I would, however, take it with a pinch of salt for two reasons. First of all, they offer no source or evidence for their numbers. Secondly, if you look at an archive of that page (https://archive.ph/U7Yu4) it recommends a bunch of other platforms which are likely even worse than BlockFi, again with no evidence. Not entirely clear why that section has been removed.

Having said that, even if the numbers aren't accurate, the general principles hold true. You have no idea what these platforms are doing with your money, and you have to accept all the risks without even being told what these risks are. They could be so over leveraged that a single missed payment pushes them in to insolvency. You have no idea. This is true for every single one of these platforms, from BlockFi to Binance.

It appears that Blockfi is basically a bank. They take deposits and make collateralized loans, hoping to profit on the difference between the interest rates they charge for loans and what they pay to deposit holders.

I would say the above certainly carries risks, but I don't think that website is accurate. If it was accurate, they would simply lower the interest rate offered to customers.

It is the same with all the services which offer these interest or savings accounts. So much of crypto is starting to mimic the traditional banking sector. USDT being printed out of thin air on a whim with nothing to back it up, just like USD. Exchanges running fractional reserve systems with customer deposits, and using customer deposits to make risky investments for their own benefit. Services like BlockFi turning themselves in to banks.

For all our talk of be your own bank, it seems there are an awful low of people in crypto willing to give up on the very foundation of not trusting third parties for some measly couple of percent profit. Honestly, if that's what you want, then you might as well go back to fiat banking. At least fiat banks have FDIC insurance, as opposed to sites like Binance and BlockFi which guarantee absolutely nothing.

I don’t think there is evidence to support this statement. If it were true, USDT holders would be unable to redeem their USDT for dollars and there are not credible reports of this happening. It would also mean that Bitcoin would trade at a premium for USDT verses what it trades for on other exchanges, and this is also not true.


I am not sure which exchanges you are referring to. Some exchanges offer margin loans, but they are transparent about what happens to your coin when you lend it out on the platform.

I voiced my concerns about these services in my first reply in this thread. People should be aware of the risks involved in depositing money into these services. Anyone offering to pay anything resembling interest is going to have to invest your deposit in some way in order to afford to pay the interest, unless they are planning on scamming their customers. Interest rates on FDIC insured savings accounts are around 0.1% APY, which is orders of magnitude lower than interest rates on stable coin based deposits.

I've spoken before about how Tether quietly changed the claim on their website from being backed up 1-to-1 with USD to being backed up with a range of assets, including loan repayments from the loan they gave themselves to stop them going bankrupt. I've also linked before (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5129382.msg51051918#msg51051918) to statements from Tether admitting USDT are not fully backed up as they previously claimed. The latest "Proof of funds" on their website is 3 years old and shows assets of $2.5 billion, while there are currently 38 billion USDT in circulation. Until I see some evidence to the contrary, USDT is a scam as far as I am concerned.

I was referring to these ones (https://cointelegraph.com/news/two-chinese-exchanges-help-themselves-to-user-funds), but I would bet that a lot of other exchanges are doing the exact same thing.

Tether was repaid (https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-says-its-repaid-tether-for-550m-loan-at-center-of-nyag-probe) the entire loan balance early last month. They also have 1xx.xx% of reserves compared to USDT outstanding. Tether has to pay transaction fees when issuing USDT, and some of their reserves are in crypto for that purpose; my presumption, tether has >100% reserves of USD-like assets such as dollar-denominated deposits at banks, short term high rated government bonds, and similar.

None of what you presented can reasonably be described as USDT being "printed out of thin air".

Depositing into Chinese exchanges has long been very risky. Around that time, those exchanges were also clearly presenting fake trading volumes to the public.

But doesn't the fact that they could immediately conjure up $850 million in USDT when they needed it to save themselves from bankruptcy, immediately after losing a huge amount of their funds in a hack, not seem even a little bit suspicious to you?

Do you have proof of that? A recent independent audit, for example?

In the absence of proof that USDT is 100% backed up (which Tether themselves have admitted is no longer correct, with last number they admitted being only 74% backed up), then there are few conclusions which can be reached other than "a proportion of USDT is not backed up, and therefore printed out of thin air".

Could you share in what trustful platforms is it possible to earn such interest rates by lending? Last time I checked, I don't remember in which platform, but it was a big one, I was able to earn 0,01% daily lending. Similar rates to the default interest paid annually by most crypto investment sites.

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Yes, that is a very disgusting approach from some investment sites. I consider it a kind of scam to say the truth. It happened to me twice. The first time I lost my funds, on the second I was monitoring the site and cashed out successfuly. You need to monitor these sites every week or few weeks when investing, and your email daily.

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I hope Nexo and Celsius don't go through the same way...

They do claim to be 100% backed by their "reserves".


Now what do these reserves consist of? No idea.

I personally believe there is a chance they are partially backed by other not-so-traditional things (maybe even crypto or iliquid assets) but I don't think they are printing these just because they want and when they want.

Also, I believe most people take the "74% backed" statement without knowing that this (supposedly) only happened because of Crypto Capital running away with U$ 850 millions of their reserves. They then took the loan from Bitfinex to cover part of these losses and repaid it fully this year (there is also no evidence that they did all of this in USDT, which IMO wouldn't make any sense). It doesn't necessarily mean that they were just printing USDT out of thin air since the early days.

Not really so keen to try it but on Binance Smart Chain I see some of the pools with almost 10% APY using wrapped Bitcoin. So from what I understand you just wrap you Bitcoin (so you still have it) and then pair it with another type of stablecoin like BUSD and then you get the APY within a year.

Feels safe to me, can anyone explain the catch?

There are actually even higher APYs. For example, acryptos.com offers 20% APY on your BTC. You lend your coins on Venus (like Compound but from BSC) and earn XVS (their coin) on the proccess. ACryptoS optimizes the process by getting the XVS for you and selling it for more BTC, compounding into your position.

Each thing does its own thing.

I think to lend bitcoin and receive interest in another currency isn't a good idea. Btc is the most valuable coin here, so it seems these platforms want to take your btcs to make profit for themselves while paying you back with any stablecoin or altcoin. In my opinion that is the catch. On long run they will increase their bitcoin's portfolio, while you, as investor will keep the same bitcoin portfolio, but with an extra sum of miscellaneous tokens which will probably price much less than btc.

You are not receiving all the interest in another coin, read me post again.


Part of the 20% APY is paid with their native token, but you can just instantly sell that for BTC. The part paid directly in BTC is still bigger than Blockfi, Celsius and other, though.

I'm not familiarized with this kind of investment. I thought it was like Celsius and Nexo's tokens.

The rates look pretty high. Isn't it a refined ponzi investment which generates interest from new investors' money?

As I understood they sell their native token and buy it again repeating this cycle, creating an artificial pump effect in market.

That's not what I said. Look up what is "Compound.finance" on Ethereum and you will understand what they do.

Venus is a platform on BSC with over $5 billion in assets where people can lend and borrow cryptocurrencies. They have a program where they pay their native token (XVS) to incentivize the usage, so you can lend your BTC, borrow another asset and make money on the process (through the XVS you farm).

You can already make some money this way. But then there are other platforms (like acryptos, which I mentioned above) that pool all their users funds together to lend the BTC, borrow more BTC, lend BTC and repeat, while getting the farmed XVS from the platform and selling for more BTC (a.k.a compounding the interest). They also pay you some of their governance tokens to help out with the APY.

It says what they consist of on their website:

"Other assets" handily includes literally anything and everything they want it to. Other crypto? Sure. Shitcoins? Maybe. Property? Who knows. Further, "receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities" is a complex way of saying "loan repayments from ourselves to ourselves". I don't care if that loan is now fully paid off - for several years Tether were "backing up" USDT with a loan they made to themselves. That is neither honest not trustworthy.

And if USDT is "fully backed up, full stop", then why have they not released any proof of funds, independent audits, bank statements, etc. in almost three years? It would be trivial to do so if what they said were true. Since my post higher up in this thread only 2 weeks ago, they have now pumped another 2 billion USDT in to circulation to a total of $40 billion. Their last "Proof of funds" accounts for around 6% of this total.

In additional to all the usual risks with using lending platforms that have been detailed above, as soon as you start depositing bitcoin to a third party in order to receive wrapped tokens in return, then you add in yet another custodial third party and all the risks that that brings.

But then what is their end game here? They paid $18m to the NYAG and now have provide quarterly reports describing the composition of their reserves for the next two years. Since then they printed a few billions and didn't care at all about all the "FUD".

Are they just printing as much as they before saying goodbye? But then what? They get arrested? Become fugitives? Just kill Bitcoin price (and all other crypto) and basically any governmental and instuticional trust and interest forever?

And why does so many Bitcoin OGs trust them, like Samsom Mow and Adam Back? Are they on this together with Tether and co or do they know something we don't?

All of this doesn't make any sense to me... Tether being a fraud means all the crypto market is a fraud, and we will suffer immensely for this.

Hello, although I think that this has very small earnings if your crypto money will stay in your account wallet in the long term. Saving is a good point because your money is a little more protected and at the same time fixed saving (30 days) can provide good returns sometimes.

The ruling the NYAG issued on the case is available here: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlement_agreement_-_execution_version.b-t_signed-c2_oag_signed.pdf

There are some quotes in it which directly support what I've been saying. Bold for emphasis mine throughout.

Paragraph 20:
442 million USDT backed up by $61 million. That's less than 14%

Paragraphs 25 and 26:
Tell me you don't find that shady as hell. Bitfinex transfer almost $400 million to Tether on the morning of their audit, which they then release the next day saying "Look. We have $400 million in the bank!"

Paragraph 40:

Paragraphs 42 and 43:
More "audit" shadiness. Release a statement saying "Look at all these funds we have", and then the next day start transferring them out to Bitfinex instead.

Paragraph 49:
This had been going on for months before the Attorney General finally mandated that Bitfinex come clean about the fact they were insolvent.

If they provide a quarterly report, and if it comes as a full, independent audit of their funds, then I might be inclined to believe that it is not a scam. But their history of completely and repeatedly failing to do this isn't making me hold my breath. I suspect the report they provide will be as disingenuous as the ones they have provided previously, of bank accounts which are funded the morning of the audit and emptied the day after the audit.

I would call this poor accounting practices, not evidence of fraud. Tether and Bitfinex share common ownership and management but are separate legal entities. it appears they were managed in a way such that they were a single legal entity. IIRC, at the time, there were no separate /USDT markets on bitfinex, every trading pair was /USD and customers could withdraw USDT from their USD balance at bitfinex. I am not 100% sure, but it might have been that the only way to obtain USDT at the time was to deposit USD into your bitfinex account and withdraw USDT.