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Before we fully dive into this case study, please take a moment to read my disclaimer and disclosure. It goes into detail on how none of this is financial advice and that bitcoin is risky. It also covers how I generate revenue with the use of affiliate links and a single banner ad on each study.

Here’s what the ad looks like.

Now it’s time to get back to learning about earning bitcoin interest with Celsius.

What Is Celsius?

Celsius is a Bitcoin bank that offers the ability to take out a fiat loan and use your Bitcoin as collateral or simply earn interest in BTC. Interest compounds weekly and is credited to your account every Monday.

I first heard about Celsius from episode 2 of Bitcoin and Friends. It was one of ads at the beginning that first brought my attention to Celsius. I didn’t research them a whole lot until I saw that some people were using shitcoins from a KeyBase airdrop to earn interest on what is already free money. I decided to give it a shot and see what sort of results I would get.

Case Study Parameters

This is going to be a simple case study. I am just going to deposit enough bitcoin to qualify for the affiliate sign up bonus and then let that money sit there for a few years OR until Celsius goes out of business OR they get shut down by the government.

Until that day comes, I will keep this bitcoin under their custody. As soon as I feel that I have earned some reasonable gains, I will withdraw to control my own private keys again.

Earning Bitcoin with Celsius

Earning interest is how most people will earn bitcoin with Celsius. Celsius offers a fluctuating interest rate that shifts based on supply and demand for liquidity. The more people who have open loans with Celsius, the higher the interest rate will be which will attract more depositors and the rate will fall. It’s exactly how banks should function so I am excited to see how Celsius works in the long term.

Interest compounds Celsius makes interest payments directly to my account every Monday.

Earning Bitcoin with Celsius’ Referral Program

Celsius has a nice incentive for both referrers and new signups to join with a referral link. If you signup with a referral link and deposit $200 worth of Bitcoin, both you and the person who referred you will both earn $10 worth of BTC deposited directly into your Celsius account.

I will be using both of these methods for earning bitcoin with Celsius but let’s look at some of the data in a nice visualization.

Infographic: Earning Bitcoin with Celsius

If you aren’t interested in reading this entire study, I always try to make it easy to digest each one of my studies in a nice clean infographic. I will be adding more to this one in the future as I continue to earn interest and affiliate revenue.

Bitcoin Deposits

Earning passive bitcoin is something that I think that many HODLers are very open to but we also know that if you don’t control your private keys, you don’t control your bitcoin. I am taking a cautious approach to see if I can trust Celsius or if they face a government seizure/shutdown. I will keep my deposits to a minimum for now.

So far, I have made 4 deposits to bring my balance to at least $200 so I get the affiliate bonus of $10 of free bitcoin. I experimented with different payments to see how the whole system worked before I sent in the final deposit.

Deposit 1: 100,000 Satoshis

My first deposit was just a test to see how the whole platform works. I sent 100,000 Sats to my own unique deposit address and as soon as it was confirmed on-chain, I received an email notification from Celsius letting me know that my account had received a deposit.

My balance is 100,000 Satoshis (0.00100000 BTC).

So far, so good.

Deposit 2: 137,000 Satoshis

After I made my first deposit, I decided to empty the balance of one of my lightning wallets since I only had about $20 in it. I sent another 137,000 Sats to zero out my wallet balance.

My new total balance is now 237,000 Sats (.00237000 BTC).

Deposit 3: 152,000 Satoshis

In Case Study #10: Earning Bitcoin with the Fold App, I chart all of my purchases that pay bitcoin “cashback” for purchasing gift cards. When I began that study, you couldn’t make withdrawals but since then, Fold now offers the ability to actually send on-chain payments to your own wallet. I sent the first 152,000 Sats I got back from Fold to my Celsius deposit address.

The new grand total is 389,000 Satoshis (0.00389000 BTC).

Deposit 4: 3,000,000 Satoshis

Since none of my previous deposits brought my balance above $200 USD, I decided to top up my balance to see if I would actually get the affiliate bonus. I bought some bitcoin with the Cash App and sent 3 million Sats to my Celsius deposit address.

Celsius now hodls 3,389,000 Satoshis on my behalf.

Total Deposits: 3,389,000 Satoshis

My final balance is now sitting at a total of 3,389,000 Satoshis (.03389000 BTC). The only increase in the balance over the next few years will only be interest payments every week and any referral signups. If I decide to take out a loan with Celsius, I will need to add more Bitcoin but I don’t know if I will ever do that. For now, I will let my bitcoin sit and collect interest while I continue to collect data points about Celsius.

Now that I have made my deposits, let’s take a look at how many sats I stack from interest payments.

Bitcoin Interest Earned

Earning passive bitcoin is something that I think that many HODLers are very open to but we also know that if you don’t control your private keys, you don’t control your bitcoin. I am taking a cautious approach to see if I can trust Celsius or if they face a government seizure/shutdown.

The interest rates that are available on Celsius are WAY better than any interest rates at my fiat bank so I am excited to see what sort of growth this service experiences as more people want to gain price exposure to Bitcoin without having to know much about bitcoin.

Instead of updating this page with all of the most up to date info on each interest payment I receive, you can see each and every payment here in this Google Sheet where I track the results of every case study that is in progress.

Bitcoin Affiliate Revenue

Since the primary means of revenue generation for Bitcoin Case Studies is affiliate revenue, what case study would be complete without me going into some detail on how much bitcoin I have earned from referring new users to try Celsius.

I signed up with someone else’s referral link, I qualified for $10 worth of Bitcoin as soon as I met their minimum requirements. Since I didn’t meet their $200 balance until I made my 4th deposit, I didn’t receive my referral sign up bonus until January 15th. It was showing in my account but was marked as “Locked” for like a week after it was first added to my balance.

As time goes on and I have more data to educate new users, I anticipate that I will get more people to sign up using my link and my affiliate revenue numbers will naturally climb.

If you decide to sign up with my Celsius referral link, then we both receive $10 of free bitcoin after you have deposited your first $200 and you really help me to work on my bitcoin projects full-time.

Affiliate Bonus 1: 114,000 sats

Since I signed up with someone else’s referral link, I received 114,000 Satoshis (about $10 at the time) about a week after I met the $200 balance requirement. This payment was marked as “Locked” within my Celsius app until January 15th.

Affiliate Bonus 2: 128,000 sats

After I published about 10 weeks of data or so, I noticed that I received my second referral signup! This was a really exciting point since I haven’t done much marketing of this study yet. This shows me the potential of this study as a means to generate long-term bitcoin revenue.

Total Affiliate Revenue: 242,000 sats

I have officially made my first referral signup which brings my total affiliate revenue to almost a quarter-million sats and I am just getting started. I can only imagine what these numbers will look like after a couple of years.

Now that I have gone into some detail on how I am using Celsius, now let’s take a moment to consider some other things before you create an account.

Things To Consider

So far, Celsius looks like a pretty cool service for those who are interested in a Bitcoin bank account to earn interest that gets paid out in Bitcoin (BTC). There are a few caveats that you should be aware of before you decide to jump in.

$200 “Minimum” Balance

In order to qualify for the $10 affiliate bonus, I am required to have a balance of at least $200 USD. As soon as I deposited a couple of million Sats, I noticed that I had a $10 pending payment that became “unlocked” on January 15th, 2020.

If you aren’t comfortable with someone else having control over $200+ of your bitcoin, then I would stay away. If a $200 risk is worth the potential upsides, then it might be worth it for you to try Celsius.

Earn Interest On Your Shitcoins

Since this project is all about Bitcoin, I don’t mention shitcoins very often but since I know that not everybody understands that Bitcoin is the best, I should also let my readers know that they can earn interest on their shitcoins too. If you have a bunch of shitcoins that are just sitting on your wallet doing nothing, maybe you should be earning some interest on them until you realize that you should dump them for bitcoin.

Celsius Has 100% Custody Of Your Bitcoin

Ideologically, I am against custodial services and encourage everyone to control their own private keys (proof of keys) and to use a hardware wallet device for the highest level of security but since the purpose of this project is to generate simple data on how to make money with Bitcoin, I decided to deposit a little bit of coin and take the risk so my readers can learn from my experience.

Currently, they have a little over 3,500,000 Satoshis of mine which I will let stay there for the duration of this study.

It’s possible that they might not even allow me to withdraw my money when I ask for it but one of the reasons why I’ve created this case study is to test whether or not I will be faced with any friction when I decide to withdraw.

Celsius Requires 100% KYC

As if it isn’t bad enough that they control your private keys by hodling your crypto on your behalf, they are also a fully licensed and regulated financial institution, which means that they are also fully compliant with countless banking laws. That means KYC. They have my social security number and a picture of both the front and back of my ID. It sucks but I am doing this so that my readers can make more educated decisions when it comes to earning bitcoin.

I plan on taking everything out as soon as I have earned a decent amount of interest and collected enough data points to make a decent case study about their service. If I am able to generate enough affiliate revenue from this study, I will probably just leave some in their custody to keep this case study active indefinitely.

Conclusion

Celsius is a unique new service that I think will become very popular with businesses and individuals who are interested in a Bitcoin bank instead of controlling their own private keys. It will be interesting to see where Celsius goes and if they are able to continue to make interest and affiliate payments to all of their users. If they can manage to stay solvent, they may be a great way to onboard new users to bitcoin with a financial institution that most are already familiar with.

Thanks for taking the time to read this case study. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on KeyBase.

Also, if you would like to help me to work full-time on bitcoin projects like this one as well as help me get even more data points for my study on earning bitcoin with Tippin.Me, please consider sending an LN tip my way.