It seems like there is an ever-growing list of crypto exchanges and services that pop up every day. It can be stressful, annoying, indifferent, or any mix of emotions just trying to keep up with the crypto sphere, but one caught my eye that I felt the need to review for all of you.
Celsius Network is the name of this crypto service that caught my eye and the reason why is that it’s amongst the growing ranks of crypto interest accounts.
Why is this important or noteworthy if it already exists? That’s a good question because it’s not the first of its kind, nor is it going to be the last, but it’s a type of crypto service that I actively use in my daily life which gives me the confidence to review it for my readers.
Before I spoil too many details about Celsius Network, I’ll just let you keep reading so you can see what I liked, disliked, and if it’s the right crypto interest account for you and your money.
What is Celsius Network
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Celsius Network states that part of its mission is to provide a “new economy,” and provide alternatives to big banks. They state:
“Our goal is to disrupt the financial industry, one happy user at a time, and introduce financial freedom through crypto.”
This is a statement that plenty of crypto developers, services, coins, etc. have made, and it’s a good one as people turn to crypto for those very reasons - to decouple from traditional investment and banking.
Why Celsius Network Matters
How is Celsius Network achieving all of this? By providing an interest account platform that lets you earn interest, or stake as it’s usually called, with your cryptocurrency so it earns you money passively.
This is their attempt to disrupt traditional finance because they offer interest rates that no bank savings account could possibly compete with.
A high-interest savings account with Capital One is 0.40% interest, while the Celsius Network offers as high as 6.20% on BTC and up to 10.02% for most stablecoins (USDT, Tether, USDC). Starting to see the picture?
Of course, it’s not the first of its kind crypto interest account, but it has plenty of acclaim being named best cryptocurrency wallet by Fintech Breakthrough, which is saying something given how many are out there.
The point is that these rates are not possible from banks and you can earn money on an already potentially lucrative investment with your cryptocurrency.
Celsius Network has been around since 2017, so they have 4 years of experience and a well-rounded and talented team. They boast an active network of 1m+ users and over $26bn in assets, plus plenty of security and registration to ease any skeptics of their legitimacy.
Now that you have a little context on what Celsius Network is, we’ll get into the features that they offer.
Celsius Network Features
Where to begin? Celsius Network offers a veritable trove of features that immediately intrigued me, and some that are unique and not available from its competition crypto interest accounts (more on that later).
So, what features should you know about and which ones stood out? Let’s see:
APY Earning/Staking
The most important feature is the APY (annual percentage yield) you get from earning/staking your crypto and stablecoins.
| Bitcoin APY | Ethereum APY | Litecoin APY | Stablecoin APY |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6.20% | 5.35% | 3.25% | 10.02% |
Looking at their APY rates table, as well as the above images of their crypto and stablecoin lists, you can see that the APY for holding or staking your crypto is astronomically higher than a normal bank’s high-interest savings account.
Popular cryptocurrencies like BTC (6.20%*) and ETH (5.35%**) will earn you excellent returns for simply holding your crypto with Celsius Network.
Stablecoins are much less volatile and return even higher rates at 10.02% for most, which makes them an excellent alternative to a savings account.
Of course, it’s harder to take your crypto out without being hit by capital gains.
*Up to 0.25 BTC, 3.05% (Over 0.25 BTC)
**Up to 100ETH, 3.52% (Over 100ETH)
Borrowing
Just like a bank or lender service, Celsius Network allows you to loan against your crypto (or stablecoins) as collateral. This allows users to receive loans that are tied directly to their savings on Celsius Network.
How this is advantageous over bank loans is that your collateral protects you from overlending or digging yourself into a debt hole.
The interest rates for these loans are also significantly better for you than what would be offered from a bank or lender.
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CelPay
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Celsius Network works as a wallet, so CelPay is just their attempt to use their services like a cash app similar to Venmo or CashApp, but with crypto instead.
Being able to pay or send crypto to people through their service helps eliminate the need to copy, paste or find wallet addresses and keeps everything in one easy-to-use service/app for users to access.
Credit Card
Many of the big-name competitors to Celsius Network are rolling out or starting to offer credit cards that help you earn crypto for each purchase.
Nexo Wallet and BlockFi, in particular, have begun shipping credit/debit cards to users, but Celsius Network is still in the waitlist phase for the credit card, which is unfortunate that I haven’t been able to try it out, but it is highly anticipated and soon to be a great feature to help them maintain their competitive edge against the field.
Swap Beta
One of the troublesome aspects of exchanging cryptocurrency is fees. Ethereum is a major culprit with often outrageous gas fees for simply sending small increments, which makes it useless to send anything below large sums to offset fees.
Celsius Network has begun their beta for Swap, which is a service that allows swapping crypto pairs, like BTC/USDC or LTC/BTC (coins that are compatible to swap) to allow you to quickly exchange from one coin to another.
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The real kicker is that they will be offering this feature with zero fees.
Celsius Network Business
For anyone running a business that wants to become more cutting edge and stay on top of the financial landscape, Celsius Network offers Business services.
From API platform solutions to corporate onboarding, to lending, borrowing, or using crypto for larger business financial purposes, Celsius Network is trying to become the leader in both individual and business solutions.
Community Features
Finally, Celsius Network has a large and dedicated community that features its own proprietary token, CEL.
That’s not all, they also have proof of community for a rewards explorer to verify the transparency of their rewards and transactions.
They even have their own swag shop to buy Celsius Network merch to show off brand allegiance for their mission of financial freedom.
Celsius Network vs. the Competition
I’ve mentioned it throughout the review, but now we’ll discuss how Celsius Network stacks up to some of its competition.
Nexo Wallet
The first is Nexo Wallet, which is the competition I’d consider the closest in features and functionality to Celsius Network.
What needs to be said about Nexo Wallet is that it’s a worthy competitor, so it’s hard to even fault them for their own mission on financial freedom in comparison. Nexo Wallet offers its own token as well, called Nexo Token.
They offer very competitive APY rates and lending/borrowing rates, which is something that helps them stand shoulder to shoulder, not to mention that they already have their debit card being rolled out.
Overall, Nexo Wallet and Celsius Network are very close so it all comes down to preference at that point.
BlockFi
BlockFi is almost always brought up in conversation regarding crypto interest and lending services (we even review how it competes with Nexo), but does that mean it’s better than the field?
My answer? No.
Before you disregard it after I give my opinion, it’s still a worthy competitor, but it misses the mark a few times. The reasons are that the interest rates aren’t spectacular, the service can be a bit slow at times (transfer speeds), and they have fees after a certain amount of transactions per month.
Celsius Network feels like the crypto interest account for the people, while BlockFi still feels like more of a traditional banking service at times.
CEX.io
CEX is a surprising competitor because they aren’t as well known as some of the others, but they aren’t anything to scoff at.
They offer a good list of crypto and stablecoins, including some of the meme coins such as SHIB, as well as all of the usual suspects like BTC, LTC, LINK, XRP, ETH, DOGE, etc.
Also on offer is margin trading, a neat addition but only useful if you have an understanding of risk management and the know-how to margin trade, which a lot of people don’t and frankly shouldn’t until they’re comfortable/educated.
Unlike other exchanges they also offer loans, albeit shorter loan terms, and it’s nothing to write home about. As for the interest rates they offer for coins, they only allow staking for a select group of coins, which is fine, but it’s not as robust as other offerings from other crypto services.
Hodlnaut
They know what they are and they do it well. They don’t offer a huge variety of crypto to stake/earn interest on, but they offer the usual suspects that anyone that is investing in crypto should own.
Their rates are also pretty good which is the one thing they need to do well.
Hodlnaut isn’t going to surprise you or impress you all that much, but sometimes less is more so if you don’t want a card, lending services, or any of the extracurriculars, they’re a good option.
Why Choose Celsius Network?
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It might seem like I’m shilling for Celsius Network after comparing them to the competitors, but I can assure you that I am being impartial.
In fact, I’ve used BlockFi for some time, and I even still use Nexo Wallet, but Celsius Network impresses me a lot.
Their commitment to their cause, their ability to offer nearly every feature the competitors do, yet still manage to do it well is something that stood out for me.
The addition of having proof of rewards and transparency is great for those who truly believe in crypto as the future of finance.
On top of that, offering their own coin/token is another great bonus that can’t be discounted.
Bottom Line
Choosing any crypto service, account, exchange, coin, etc. always comes down to preference and research, preferably a healthy mix of both.
In my time spent jumping around crypto services and researching, Celsius Network came up and intrigued me plenty, so much so that I’ve been using it among the wide list of services to this day.
If you’re someone that wants to earn passively on their income or investments, then Celsius Network should be on your must-checkout list to get a healthy mix of features and interest-earning potential.
