I have praised OnJuno (now Juno) in the past. I wrote what is probably the most thorough review of Juno here. I soured on Juno when they released their own coin. Since then many things have happened and I haven’t talked about them (except for a brief mention in “Maybe Don’t Keep Your Money in Fintech (NeoBank)” post). Well, here is a thorough post having another look at Juno. I will try to not repeat stuff I have already mentioned in the review so that this post is complementary to the review article.
A while ago news broke out that Wyre, a crypto partner of Juno, was reportedly shutting down (yahoo). Juno preventively took the following actions to minimize their customer’s exposure:
- disabled crypto buys on the platform.
- auto-converted some of the stablecoins (USDC, USDT and mUSDC) to USD. reimbursed fees incurred while auto-converting these stablecoins.
- massively increased crypto withdrawal
- Daily withdrawal limit from $40,000 to $200,000
- Monthly withdrawal limit from $155,000 to $500,000
- Yearly withdrawal limits from $500,000 to $1,500,000
- and repetitively sent out explanations saying what they were doing.
There was no doubt that what they did was correct, regardless of the outcome with Wyre. Their choice was only validated as Wyre imposed up to a 90% withdrawal limit on withdrawal (cointelegraph).
Fast forward a bit and Juno has already found a new crypto partner in Zero Hash (Juno Blog). They have displayed an excellent visual revealing various aspects of $JCOIN on their website. This time they are supposedly going to support 30+ coin (which is possibly 3x what they had) and among other things are continuing to build gift card purchase within the app. So, they are doing great, as they ever have. They are one of those rare crypto platforms that actually get features out.
But should you put USD with them for 5% APY on up to $25k and 3% APY after (up to $250k)? Do you want to entrust large sums of money with fintechs that aren’t directly FDIC insured? Do you want to put money in a platform that supports crypto where the consequence of a data leak and hack can possibly mean a total wipe of your savings? Can you guarantee that every single person who works in a crypto platform works in the US and works in good faith? And, do you really need 5% (or 5.5% with $JCOIN) when you can get around 4% APY from banks that are actually FDIC-insured, like Primus bank? Better yet, why not go with a far more recognized bank like PNC which has 3.5% APY on top of up to a $400 signup bonus? If you want to go Fintech then there is Enzo with 4.03% APY or Bask with 4.15% APY and neither of them (to my knowledge) has exposure to crypto. Of course, there are plenty of other options (including as high as 4.35% APY on saving and 5.02% CD rates) and DoctorofCredit does an excellent job of compiling them all.
Closing Thoughts
A big question that probably needs to be asked is how are fintech making money in this economy. And what edge does putting saving in fintech give when FDIC-insured banks are providing just as high of APY?
