Cryptocurrency lending and interest-bearing savings account are all the rage today that allow you to either use your crypto as collateral or earn passive income on your crypto holdings without selling them. Celsius Network and CoinLoan are two such platforms that offer attractive features but let’s see which one is the best for you.
Celsius Network vs CoinLoan: An Intro
Founded by CEO Alex Faliushin and Max Sapelov in 2017, CoinLoan is a peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto lending platform. This Estonia-based crypto lender is a regulated cryptocurrency investment platform licensed in Europe and implements KYC and AML policy.
, whose mobile app is available for you to download on both iOS and Android devices, caters to both lenders and borrowers and supports crypto as well as fiat.Besides retail, CoinLoan also allows corporations to borrow crypto, earn yield, and swap digital and fiat assets. To better serve its institutional investors, CoinLoan leverages its over-the-counter (OTC) desk that allows them to deal with large volumes of crypto at a predefined price and process orders faster with no settlement delays.
Just like CoinLoan, Celsius Network, too, was founded during the bull market of 2017 by Alex Mashinsky, Chief Strategy Officer S. Daniel Leon, and CTO Nuke Goldstein.
Late in 2021, expanded its $400 million Series B funding round due to oversubscription, valuing the company at $3.5 billion. The lender has also acquired a crypto custody platform GK8 for $115 million and has plans to enter the non-fungible token (NFT) sector in the near future.
Headquartered in England, the crypto lender has been a subject of state and federal scrutiny. Currently, it has over 200 employees and reports $20.6 billion in assets and more than 1.6 million users.
Products Offered
Let’s now take a look at what features both of these crypto lenders offer you.
Interest-bearing Accounts
One of the main products of CoinLoan is its interest-bearing account which supports 27 virtual and fiat currencies in total. You can earn as much as 12% APY on these assets, including a 2% CLT staking reward.
Interest is accrued daily here and deposited directly into your CoinLoan Interest-bearing Savings Account on the first day of each month.
Celsius Network, on the other hand, offers as much as 16.45% APY on your crypto assets. You can earn as much as 7.75% on your first 0.25 BTC deposit, which nearly halves to 1.49% on subsequent BTC. It supports many cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and more.
In total, the lender supports a much wider range of virtual currencies, currently 52, covering assets like OMG, ZEC, TUSD, ZRX, ETC, KNC, MATIC, MANA, WBTC, DOGE, and XAUt, an ERC-20 token with gold backing, besides the most popular ones. Additionally, the time period that you can keep your assets on the platform is as low as one year or as long as 20 years.
To get started here, you just have to get Celsius, either on its web application or iOS and Android app, verify yourself, and once you have transferred your crypto on the platform, you can start getting paid every Monday. You can further choose whether to receive this passive income in kind or CEL, Celsius’s native token. Choosing CEL will also net you a high return, but this option is not available to US users.
Crypto Loans
Besides earning on your crypto assets, you can also put up your crypto as collateral on these platforms and borrow fiat or crypto without selling your cryptocurrencies. The benefit of using these crypto lenders is there are no origination fees, as well as no credit checks.
On Celsius Network, you can use about 40 crypto assets as collateral and receive crypto loans in six stablecoins like USDT, USDC, TUSD, GUSD, PAX, and MCDAI, as well as USD. The minimum you can borrow in stablecoins is $100 and $1,000 in fiat currency.
When it comes to the interest rate on your loan, the highest is 8.95% for a loan-to-value ratio of 50%, while the lowest rate is 1%, but that only allows you to borrow just 25% of the value of your collateral. The loan term meanwhile ranges from 1 to 3 years.
On CoinLoan, in comparison, you can borrow as much as 70% of your crypto holding’s value. In a negative scenario, this high LTV can put some at risk, as such, CoinLoan sends you an email notification about your new status so that you can add more collateral or make an early repayment either partially or in full.
For collateral, CoinLoan supports more than 15 digital currencies covering the most popular ones like BTC, ETH, and ADA, as well as WBTC, UNI, AXS, SUSHI, YFI, and PAXG. Meanwhile, you can receive your loan amount in BTC, ETH, LTC, XMR, XRP, LINK, and WBTC, popular stablecoins covering USDC, USDT, BUSD, DAI, TUSD, and PAX along with fiat currencies including EUR and GBP.
CoinLoan approves loans automatically and doesn’t involve any lock-ins or fines. The minimum that you can borrow on this platform is $100 for a period of 30 days. The loan setup fee meanwhile is 1%.
Crypto Portfolio Management Tools & Additional features
Another product offered by CoinLoan is trading. Once you are on its platform, you can go to the Crypto Exchange, where you choose among the supported assets. Once you have set your paying or getting amount, press the Exchange button to complete the process. The process is quite swift, which makes CoinLoan a pretty solid Bitcoin trading platform, if not the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange or the ultimate trading platform.
For payment, CoinLoan supports various methods, including SEPA for Eurozone citizens, SWIFT, Visa and MasterCard for global users, and AdvCash, which is not available in the US.
The platform further allows you to withdraw your crypto to your external cryptocurrency exchange accounts and fiat assets with zero fees from the Wallet tab.
Much like , Celsius Network has no deposit or withdrawal fees. Also, its zero fees swap feature is currently adding users to the beta, giving selected users gradual access to the service. Already, users in selected regions can buy crypto using a credit card or bank account. Its users can also use a Celsius credit card to access instant crypto credit lines.
Another feature is CelPay which allows its users to send or receive crypto right from the Celsius app, which is often called the best crypto trading app by many of its users. You can still send crypto if the recipient does not have a Celsius crypto wallet.
also has a decentralized finance (DeFi) arm called CelsiusX, which aims to bridge CeFi and DeFi through a wrapped token platform, algorithmic stablecoins, and cross-chain liquidity bridge.Celsius Credit Card meanwhile, is currently in the works, and you can sign for its waitlist. The credit card gives you the opportunity to earn rewards weekly while you spend your digital assets. According to Celsius, there will be no annual fees, late payment fees, ATM fees, or foreign transaction fees. Users also get the option to pay their balance with fiat, rewards, or stablecoins.
Native Crypto Assets
Unlike many crypto lenders out there, both CoinLoan and Celsius Network have their own native tokens that offer their holders added benefits.
CEL, the native token of , has a circulating supply of 423,415,980.348 and is currency trading at $2.23, -71.878% from its all-time high hit on 4 June 2021 at 10:04.
CLT meanwhile is the native token of CoinLoan, whose total supply is 22 million. CLT is trading at $19.93, -89.948% from its ATH hit on 6 December 2020 at 15:29.
Both of these utility tokens allow their holders to earn higher interest rates by choosing to receive their earnings in them. By HODLing these tokens, you can further earn weekly rewards. Moreover, you get discounts of 25% to 50% if you pay your loan set up fee in CLT or CEL on their respective platforms.
Security
For security, CoinLoan uses BitGo as its custodian and stores its digital currencies in offline, cold, multi-signature wallets. To prevent any losses, it keeps encrypted keys' parts in the bank's safe-deposit boxes. BitGo has $100 million insurance cover from Lloyds.
CoinLoan further uses Secure Cloud Infrastructure, Web Application Firewall (WAF) and DDoS Protection, Modern Encryption Standards, performs regular vulnerability scans, has introduced a bug bounty program, and uses Two-Factor Authentication as security measures, which you must set during the account verification process itself. So, you can use the Google authenticator verification app and one more layer of security to your account.
meanwhile works with PrimeTrust and Fireblocks to its users’ assets that are stored in the cold wallets of the company. While Celsius does not directly offer insurance on your loans, both Fireblocks and PrimeTrust also provide insurance for the assets stored on the Celsius crypto wallet. Overall, both of these platforms ensure that they offer world's class security level to their users.Compare with Celsius Network and CoinLoan alternatives
Similar Savings Accounts and Loans
| Platform | Interest Rates (APY) | |
|---|---|---|
| Nexo | Up to 7% on BTC Up to 12% on Stablecoins ... 36 more coins | |
| OKX | Up to 5% on BTC Up to 0.08% on Stablecoins ... 196 more coins | |
| YouHodler | Up to 3.05% on BTC Up to 8.33% on Stablecoins ... 56 more coins |
Conclusion
Among the rising number of digital assets lenders, CoinLoan and Celsius Network are trying to make their presence through attractive interest rates and additional benefits via their native tokens.
is pretty simple and straightforward, offering a limited number of products and services on popular digital currencies, DeFi tokens, stablecoins, and fiat currencies that allow you to earn, borrow, and swap the supported tokens. Besides no credit checks here and no hidden fees, the platform offers a high LTV of up to 70% with daily compound interest.Celsius Network, on the other hand, offers a wide range of services and you can try out a lot of other things than just buy, sell, hold, earn interest, or borrow money. You have the option to try DeFi services, use its funds’ transfer system CelPay, and pay with its credit card, which is coming soon. Also, is constantly adding digital currencies. So, you can rest assured that even if Celsius doesn't support your favorite currency, it will do so somewhere down the line.
Both platforms are regularly adding new services and tools for their users, so in the coming days, they may also offer a smart grid trading bot, which will allow you to automatically trade currencies. If they do so, these features will boost the crypto suite of both Celsius Network and . As for why they will offer such free trading bots, it will benefit them in their money services business.
But of course, in both cases, these high rates are subject to market conditions. So, now with all the relevant information at your hand, you can make an informed decision as to which platform is the right option for you and best serves your specific needs and fits as per your own crypto strategy.