Voyager’s 9% is still going strong. Just got my March interest.
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Congrats on getting a nice return. Are you still comfortable with your Sofi loan and 0% cc balance sitting in Voyager?
Yes. They are shipping out a bunch of debit cards to folks that have been on the waiting list for a while (I haven’t received one yet), so I think that’s a good sign they are continuing to follow their business plan. They are moving up the rankings in the finance app category on the app store. May 15 is their due date for their next filing, so I’ll be looking over that to see what they are keeping in reserves and how it is trending.
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Voyager seems to be unaffected by the sh*t that went down with $UST the past 48 hours or so. Thankfully, they didn’t have $UST available to trade on Voyager; however, I am still slightly spooked over it and am using this event as a test to see how quickly I can move my money out in a pinch. I will likely move it back in almost immediately, but since there was a crash with $UST (a stable coin without the backing behind it that $USDC has) and it caused it to come unpegged and unstable, this is as good a time as any to see how long a withdrawal takes.
Boy am I glad I decided to go with Voyager because of it’s status as a big player, publicly traded, and independently audited vs. Stablegains, which I put a big chunk of money into for a month and a half. Stablegains was paying 15% and Voyager 9%, but I decided to forego that 6% for a place with more to back it up. Stablegains was able to pay those higher returns because they converted their depositors’ USDC into UST and staked it on the anchor network, which worked swimmingly… until yesterday. Stablegains has frozen everyone’s deposits to head off a run on the bank are are praying that $UST makes it back to $1.00 so they can open back up. I assume they are dead to everyone after this even if no one loses any money.
But since I’m getting a real “There but for the Grace of God go I,” feeling from that crash, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having second thoughts right now. Voyager’s terms allow them to do the same thing as Stablegains (prevent withdrawals) to head off a run on the bank for them as well.
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Update. I had no problem immediately converting my USDC into USD. According to their website, USD with Voyager is held at a bank and is FDIC insured. I checked the bank on the FDIC website and it is indeed insured. If there were ever an issue, this is where Voyager would limit people. They would make it so that you can’t convert USDC back into USD. That’s what they’ve allowed themselves to do in the terms.
The steps to withdraw after converting to USD are simple enough and fast - essentially 1-day ACH. I’ve heard of some people getting same-day. The money I withdrew yesterday is already posted to my Ally account. Oddly enough, it never went pending (I checked yesterday and last night) and went straight to posted and available. BUT, there is a limit of $25,000 in withdrawals per 24 hours. So that is the bottleneck. But since USD is insured, I’m less worried about the delay in having to do multiple withdrawals over multiple days.
My main concern is if Voyager is putting their depositors’ USDC into something akin to what just happened to UST. If whatever network/protocol/etc they are using to make over 9% goes belly up like Anchor just did with Luna and UST, I assume Voyager would freeze USDC deposits just like Stablegains just did and not allow USDC to be converted to USD which would be insured.
Considering what just happened to Coinbase’s stock the past week and is continuing today after their earnings report yesterday (a nice coincidence), I’m more concerned about the long term viability of Voyager now than I used to be. I will not be moving my money back in right away. Gonna sit on the sidelines for a bit to see how things shake out.
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Uh-huh… here’s another big player, publicly traded (and probably audited):
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Another congratulations on that count. I caught a whiff of the $UST and wondered if it had spooked you on Voyager. I’m really gald that your Voyager accounts are stable.
+1 if they survive this tumult they’ll be fine long term and I’ll jump in. Might drop rates by then though 
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I never moved anything back in. I decided to stay on the sidelines to see if limiting withdrawals became a thing across the industry. It did, so I am not interested anymore. Even though Voyager never limited withdrawals, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it. Everything I had in USDC at Voyager earning 9% is now at SoFi earning 1.25%.
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and, just like that
https://investvoyager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407560579227-Are-there-withdrawal-limits-
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https://coinflex.com/blog/coinflex-update-on-withdrawals/
Due to extreme market conditions last week & continued uncertainty involving a counterparty, today we are announcing that we are pausing all withdrawals. We fully expect to resume withdrawals in a better position as soon as possible.
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Celsius looks like they’re going bankrupt.
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Act like a bank, but with nearly zero equity buffer for taking bad loan losses ahead of your depositors, and then act surprised when you blow up in a market downturn.
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A nice intro to the above WSJ article if you want the highlights
—-
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Celsius
Here is a financial literacy test for you:
- You can borrow $18 billion at 8% interest.
- You can take that money and invest it in loans that pay 20% interest.
- You don’t have to put up any of your own money.
- So you get $3.6 billion a year in interest (20% of $18 billion), and you pay out $1.4 billion in interest (8% of $18 billion), so you keep about $2.2 billion for yourself.
- Is this good?
This is not a yes-or-no question, and the right answer is probably something like “well, good for who?” If you are a person who invents a business like this, and you are able to do it for a year or two and squirrel away the $2.4 billion, it is very very good for you and you can buy yachts and stuff. But in the long run, if you are borrowing at 8% and lending at 20%, you are taking some huge risk somewhere. Those 20% loans are risky and correlated and illiquid and possibly Ponzi schemes; that 8% money is flighty and unstable; you are lending out all the money you are borrowing and there is no cushion anywhere. At some point the people lending you the money at 8% are all going to ask for it back, and the people borrowing the money at 20% aren’t going to give it back, and you’re not going to have the money to pay back the 8% people, and they’re going to be really mad, and that’s when it will be useful for you to have a yacht to sail away on.
Anyway here’s a Wall Street Journal article about Celsius…
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Crypto setting all sorts of records. The ~$2B fraud is from a few years ago, the news is they caught the guy.
- CFTC Charges South African Pool Operator and CEO with $1.7B Fraud Involving Bitcoin
- CFTC: Action Is CFTC’s Largest Fraud Scheme Case Involving Bitcoin
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In more recent news, BlockFi is worth almost nothing. Time will tell if these guys overpaid by $25M or not.
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wonder what will be happen to my CC rewards there. $200 in well diversified crypto 
Oh well glad I didn’t buy more.