This week’s AMA begins here with updates from Alex, followed by community questions. As always, the timestamp from YouTube is hyperlinked to each question below.
Summary: Alex starts with a lot of updates, including some impressive statistics– Celsius has bought back 35 million CEL tokens for interest payments (that’s 5% of total supply), has paid out $650,000 in referral bonuses, and has paid $27 million total in interest payments. Additionally, 0.1% ACH deposits are live in the app, and withdrawal limits have been raised to $50k each and $150k daily. Celsius has also reopened the BnkToTheFuture equity round for one more week (8/20–8/27), to allow users who may have had issues getting verified in time during the first round the ability to invest.
Furthermore, Alex announced that PAX Gold (PAXG) would finally be available to earn interest in the Celsius app– and he also hinted that other similar coins might be coming in the future as well. Integrations with two major exchanges (billions in assets) will be announced soon– Celsius is simply waiting on these exchanges to make the announcement first, and a new exchange listing for CEL token is still being worked out. Additionally, the Top 100 will soon be expanded to the Top 200, and US users can expect a big surprise on Monday with their interest payments.
Lastly, Alex mentioned that there is a new version of the mobile app coming very soon– this will include simplified layouts, quicker loading times, and fewer steps needed to login (as well as biometric login). Celsius also recently hired a new VP of Marketing, who will help expand the brand while keeping with the community-first ethos. Finally, Alex described Celsius’ Proof-of-Community (PoC)– an upcoming feature that he has been hinting at for the past few weeks. PoC will allow all users to verify that they received the appropriate amount of interest for their holdings each week by signing cryptographically– and when enough users sign, this serves as proof that Celsius has at least as much or more in AUM as they claim. This system will also be open-source on Github, so users can verify the code and make suggestions for improvements– and Alex also invited any competitors to use PoC to increase transparency throughout the industry.
And if you’d like to earn interest on your crypto, gold, and stablecoins with Celsius, scroll to the end for instructions on how to get $20 in BTC when you sign up.
Celsius Updates
- Crypto is cool now. Billionaire investors are talking about Bitcoin, the OCC decided to allow banks to custody crypto, and JP Morgan is putting their blockchain development back in the hands of an early Ethereum backer. These are all indicators that mass adoption is happening and is coming.
- We invented this category. Celsius has been working from day one to give back as much as possible to the community– and we wouldn’t be here without the help of the community. No matter how much venture capital money BlockFi has and how much ad space they buy with influencers, they can’t duplicate the Celsius community. And Celsius has kept the promise of always giving back.
- Some jaw-dropping stats. Celsius has bought over 35 million CEL tokens on exchanges and paid them back to users as interest– that’s over 5% of the total supply. Every week, Celsius is buying more CEL back from the market.
- Celsius has never charged fees. Gas fees on Ethereum are crazy right now– and this makes life much more difficult for smaller DeFi farmers. Smart contract interactions, especially, can really add up– and Celsius never charges withdrawal fees. And now in the USA, ACH deposits into the Celsius app are only 0.1%– and you start earning interest instantly.
- Look at the fine print. Celsius never charges hidden fees– and we want to show you where our competitors do charge these fees. Send an email to [email protected] to tell us your story of hidden fees with any of our competitors, and we’ll add it to the website.
- Referral rewards. Celsius has paid over $650,000 in referral rewards to the community. Refer a friend and you both get $20, refer a friend who takes a loan and you both get $100. Alex just crossed 100 referrals!
- Over $27 million in interest payments. All of this has been paid back to the community– all 150,000 users. And the interest payments keep increasing every week!
- Withdrawal limits have been raised. Withdrawals of up to $50,000 at a time, and $150,000 each day before needing secondary verification. Our competitors can make this tough on you– but Celsius wants to do the opposite.
- Support issues are being worked out. After every AMA, we get hundreds of tickets simply asking questions about the AMA. We’ve doubled the customer service team, and are working through the backlog. But if you have a question about something from the AMA– please ask in the Telegram group, not using the support email.
- 1% loans are still available. Although the limit was originally $10 million, 1% loans will be extended past the $10 million mark. A flood of new loans have come in since borrowing was enabled against CEL and the rest of the coins in the wallet.
- BnkToTheFuture equity raise reopened. This has reopened for an extra week, August 20th-August 27th. Too many people who wanted to invest during the first equity round were not able to get verified in time, so this round is for them (but no difference from the first round). An extra benefit of onboarding with BnkToTheFuture– this will be the only way that US users will be able to earn in CEL– hopefully in 30–60 days.
- PAX Gold coming to Celsius! Celsius has figured out how to generate yield on PAXG, and this should be live in the app in about a week. The interest rate is similar to Tether’s XAUT– around 4.5%, earning gold-on-gold.
- Two exchange integrations coming soon. These are not exchange listings, but integrations that will allow users of the exchanges (with billions of dollars in assets, tens of thousands of users) to earn interest on their coins directly from their exchange wallets. This will increase Celsius’ Assets Under Management (AUM) and help grow the company– and Celsius will announce it as soon as the exchanges give them the green light. The first announcement should be coming any day now.
- Exchange listings are still in the works. Big exchanges still want for Celsius to pay a listing fee, and Celsius is refusing to budge on this. We think that exchanges should pay us to bring them one of the best communities in the crypto space.
- Will Celsius support the Spark fork? This is not like every other fork– Spark is essentially trying to bring DeFi to non-Ethereum blockchains. It’s not a normal airdrop where you hold coins at a set time and receive your reward– this is a whole new staking mechanism. Celsius is going to verify that Spark staking is safe, and then will take our XRP pool and extract as much value as possible from it.
- Loans now have their own support line. To help ease congestion on the regular support email, if you have loan questions just email [email protected] and the loans team can handle it directly.
- Top 100 is becoming the Top 200. Instead of the Top 100, the list will be expanded to the Top 200 CEL token holders. These Top 200 holders get special benefits, such as free swag and priority support– but the number needed is always increasing.
- Compounding interest is your friend. The new website has a much improved compounding interest calculator, and will show you how compounding interest is the vehicle that will help take you to financial security.
- Monday is the best day of the week. US users have been missing out on earning-in-CEL– and Celsius is doing something for American users a platinum treatment this Monday– a beautiful, juicy surprise on top of your interest. A record-setting surprise for Celsius– something we’ve never done before.
- ICO CEL Holder has been selling off. A large investor from the Celsius ICO has been selling off nearly 7 million CEL token to take profits– and this has recently depressed the price of CEL token. There is only 1.3 million CEL left in this wallet, so this sell pressure should relinquish soon– and Celsius will be buying record levels of CEL token moving forward.
- New version of the app coming soon! Key changes include simplification of user interface/user experience, quicker loading times, and reducing the steps needed to login (as well as biometric login). If you’re interested in becoming a beta tester for either the mobile or desktop apps, email [email protected].
- New VP of Marketing hired. Marketing activities are going to ramp up at Celsius– but while keeping to the same ethos of giving back to the community and not paying for ads on Google or Facebook.
- Celsius created this space. In early 2018, there was no earning interest income on crypto until Celsius came along– Celsius invented this category, and still there are no companies who are paying as much interest as Celsius is. But the point is not who is better– Celsius loves and works with many of the projects in DeFi. The point is working together to create real value for the crypto community, and Celsius has a clear advantage in terms of ease of use for the average user.
Community Questions
Q: Now that ACH deposits are working, when will recurring, scheduled deposits be enabled?
Alex: That is a utility on top of ACH– which took us a while to enable and negotiate the rates down to 0.1%. But now that we have ACH deposits, we should be able to add features like this– reach out to Waseem (Waseem Shabout, find him on Telegram or Twitter) to ask him about it every week, and he’ll get it done for you.
Q: How is the interest rate for CEL token calculated? Is there a CEL price at which the interest rate is unsustainable?
Alex: We earn a certain level of income every week– and the little extra that we earn above the rest of our coins, we pay back on CEL. Celsius is a profitable company after paying interest on all of your coins and paying our employees– and this is not something that is easy. We’re able to get there because we have the right balance of loan demand (fully deployed), AUM (over $1.1 billion), and institutions that we work with– we have over 326 onboarded institutions– more than anyone else. And this is why Celsius is profitable, and is earning the money we pay you– and our competitors are simply burning cash from investors.
Q: What are Celsius’ plans to stay ahead of the competition in a crowded crypto lending market?
Alex: Do you own an iPhone? How many companies are getting into the phone business and trying to make a better device? Apple makes close to 100% of the profit in the phone industry– so in many industries, there is one company who has managed to corner the market– but very rarely do you find these companies giving back to their community the way Celsius does. Our goal from day one has been to bring 100 million new users to the blockchain while consistently giving as much back to our users as possible. We only want to do well after we have done good.
Q: What’s the best advice to convince my family members to use Celsius? Their biggest concern is security.
Alex: First, just try to get them to put $10 or $20 in there– with Celsius, there is no minimum deposit. Second, every person on the planet has their own comfort zone– and new users will be much more likely to use stablecoins or tokenized gold when coming from mainstream finance. And for some people it will only take a week– they get one interest payment and they’re good to go– but for some people it may take more than a year! But you can’t rush them– because when you put pressure on people, they’ll start to wonder if it’s a scam. Each person will require their own time to feel comfortable using a new financial system like Celsius.
Q: Do you think Bitcoin will be replaced by something better in the coming years or decades?
Alex: Yeah, I’ve said this before– I don’t think the winning blockchain has been invented yet. It doesn’t mean that Bitcoin isn’t great– it’s the granddaddy of crypto and always will be. But the blockchain that’s going to work for seven billion people has not yet been created. If you look at any technological evolution– including Voice over IP (VoIP)– I built the first gateway, and the company that won the most value was not AT&T or Verizon, it was WhatsApp– and that happened 20 years later. So the point is that as great as Bitcoin and Ethereum are, they are just like the first and second generation protocols of VoIP. But who creates the value, and how it gets created– that’s what it’s all about. This is why so many users are coming to Celsius– and the challenge is always delivering more value to more people at lower cost.
Q: When will there be a way to independently verify Celsius’ Assets Under Management (AUM)?
Alex: It’s coming much sooner than you think– we don’t have a date yet, but it’s coming soon. We invented a new system called Proof of Community (PoC). What this means is that all of your community can audit you at any time and confirm that they received the proper amount of interest for the amount of coins they are holding. If all of Celsius’ users electronically sign that they received the correct amount of interest payments for their holdings, then Celsius can prove that they hold at least as much in assets as they say they do– and you’ll be able to see each week how many people voted and confirmed that they received the correct amount of interest. And this will raise the bar even higher– because you’ll be able to see that the interest came into the wallet from institutions and is not going in a circle within the company.
And we think this is a much better process than hiring a firm to audit us and publishing the audit. In 2007, a top auditor told everyone that Lehman Brothers was fine right before they went bankrupt– but audits only look at what was happening at a year ago. Proof of Community checks what happened a year ago, but also what happened in the past week– because the blockchain is immutable. This is a much faster process, and we think that PoC will be the new standard for being a financial institution in crypto– and it will be open-source, so we are inviting our competitors to implement this as well. And if you look at the code and think we can improve things to make it even better, reach out and let us know!
Q: Do you think that decentralized stablecoins will overtake traditional, centralized stablecoins?
Alex: We love stablecoins– we have 13 different ones that we pay interest on– but you can already hear regulators in Washington DC grumbling about the fact that DeFi uses products that don’t require KYC. Now of course, we all believe in decentralization– but the regulators will be coming for these companies. And the centralized stablecoins are interesting, because many of them are fueling much of the growth in DeFi. Also, some of these stablecoins are issued by companies that are not trust companies, or are issued overseas– so they’re not like GUSD, USDC, or TUSD, which are all trust companies. So you have to be careful with what you buy– because Celsius is not promising you that you will be able to redeem 1 GUSD for $1, Gemini is promising you that, and the US Government and the State of New York are making sure that they keep that promise.
I’m actually planning to publish an article about this soon– the velocity of the dollar (how many times a dollar is changing hands) has been decreasing over the past few years– and this is telling you that economic activity with the dollar is slowing down. But the velocity of the digital dollar (stablecoins) has been increasing like crazy! And the use is better as well– you can send money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So stablecoin use is definitely increasing rapidly, and is something to keep an eye on.
Q: How does Celsius manage the risk of the coins they lend out to DeFi protocols?
Alex: Yes, we do participate in Compound and a few other DeFi projects. But we only work with battle-tested protocols that have been around for a while– such as Maker and Compound. Sometimes we lend, and sometimes we borrow DAI against our ETH. We are always looking for the best yield on your crypto– but want to do this in a safe way. This is the same thing that we are doing with XRP’s Spark– we want to give you the improved yield by using this ecosystem, but only after we’ve audited it to ensure that it’s safe.
Q: If you switch from earning interest in-CEL to in-kind mid-week, how is that calculated for your interest payment?
Alex: You should get a little bit of both with your interest payment.
Q: Can you convince me to sell my physical gold and buy a gold stablecoin to earn interest?
Alex: I don’t want to try and convince you to do anything– you need to make your own decisions. Maybe only try converting some of it first, and see what you think. There is no question that digital gold– and I’m not talking about Bitcoin– Tether Gold and PAX Gold, and some of the other coins that we’re going to be adding– will yield you more than physical gold. Now with ACH and SEPA bank transfer and such low fees, you’re paying less to acquire the gold than you would with buying physical gold because of delivery and storage fees– and of course, you don’t earn interest on physical gold.
Q: What’s the best way to earn interest on my fiat with Celsius?
Alex: You have two options– you can do an ACH transfer to Coinbase, buy USDC with your fiat, and send that to Celsius. Alternatively, you can use ACH to transfer directly into the Celsius app and buy USDC that way.
Q: Do you have advice for anyone who may be wanting to lobby their representatives to be able to earn interest on stablecoins?
Alex: Right now, Celsius is sadly too small to be able to lobby on behalf of their members. We need to grow, and get some bigger muscles– and then we can do anything we want. I would not push the regulators right now, though– but there are legal ways to solve these problems. In last week’s AMA, I mentioned that anyone from any state can open a New Jersey LLC, and open a corporate account with Celsius to be able to earn interest on stablecoins (even if you live somewhere this is blocked, like Texas).
Q: I would love to see my interest accrue in real time like Coinbase– will Celsius consider implementing this feature?
Alex: We don’t want for you to watch money dripping into your account at 0.15% APY with Coinbase– we want to slap you across the face with a big interest payment every Monday! So, it doesn’t matter if we show it to you in real time or once a week– what matters is that we earn you the interest– and that we will soon be able to prove to you that we did.
Q: What criteria do you use to evaluate new assets, and will you be adding new types of digital assets?
Alex: Yes– we’ve already done a transaction outside of crypto and are planning to add all sorts of digital assets such as Libra and the digital dollar when they arrive. This is about where the industry is going, where our users are going, and what our community is looking for in terms of assets. And this is why we are experimenting with other digital assets so that we will be ready for this in the future.
Q: Can I transfer big money into Celsius– on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto?
Alex: Yes you can– I think our single largest deposit was $14 million in crypto, and our largest withdrawal has been around $8 million.
Q: Do you plan for Celsius to be a long-standing, independent organization for the long run?
Alex: Yes, it’s an excellent question. This is my 8th company– every one of my previous seven companies I lost control of. Why? They went public, I brought in big investors– again, the two founders of BlockFi aren’t in control of the board or of the company– it’s the Venture Capitalists (VCs) who’ve invested over $100 million that are in charge.
From day one, Celsius was created in the best interest of the community– and from the beginning we’ve had investors coming to us asking for a piece of the company. But I know how these things end up– I’ve done seven venture-backed companies before Celsius. And in all of them, one way or another, the VCs ended up controlling the destiny of the company. So that’s why when we chose Tether as an investor, one of the most important things was that they made it clear that they would not tell us how to run the company– and that’s why they didn’t need board seats.
We need to stay the course– my goal for Celsius is for it to be around for several hundred years after I die, and to still always act in the best interest of the community. And that will make me so happy!
Q: Will it be possible to see what interest we have on Friday before we get it paid out on Monday?
Alex: Let’s see if we can come up with something– but this is not yet planned.
Q: When do you think Wall Street will stop trying to slow down Bitcoin’s progress?
Alex: They are slowly coming on board– the big banks are investing in blockchain and doing business with crypto exchanges like Gemini and Coinbase– and there’s starting to be too much money here for the banks to pass up. And as the amount of assets in crypto grow, more banks will be willing to come in. But the OCC decision that allowed banks to custody crypto is a huge step– I’m shocked at how little coverage that got!
Certain banks are definitely still trying to slow down the progress of companies like Celsius by talking to regulators– but Celsius has done everything we’ve done while staying compliant! And you can look at all of our licenses here. Since the beginning, while so many of our competitors are trying to skirt the laws– Celsius has worked hard to always be compliant– and so has BlockFi, to give them credit.
And the regulators right now are on the side of the crypto companies– they agree that banks were never given a monopolistic right to dictate what you earn on your money– and this is definitely helping the crypto space move forward.
Q: Do you think DeFi and open finance will become a tool to fight poverty?
Alex: If we develop DeFi to act in the best interest of the community, then yes, it will. However, if we are using DeFi to enrich the rich and become farmers pumping up the next new useless token– this is not the way to fight poverty. So– do we want to build the future, and help other people? Because there is no other technology that can do this. CeFi and DeFi are the same on this front– but we need to work together to deliver financial independence to 7 billion people on this planet.
For me, the joy of being able to do good and do well every day at Celsius is much more important than playing money games on the blockchain– and for most people, these games are not going to end well.
Q: Is Celsius Network available in New York?
Alex: Yes! You can deposit BTC, ETH, USDC, CEL, and even take loans in New York! You can definitely be a New Yorker and still be a Celsian.
Want to unbank yourself with Celsius (and get a free $20)?
- Install the Celsius wallet (https://celsius.network/get-the-app/)
- Use a referral code during registration (148895d2c9)
- Deposit $200 of crypto or stablecoins
You will earn $20 in BTC once you hold your deposit for 30 days
