[Beginner Friendly] Easy $50 in Bitcoin from Celsius. 8.88% on USDC, 6.20% in Bitcoin.

06/11/2022 Update: Due to current FUD surrounding Celsius, I suggest not bothering with this signup bonus for the time being. It may all be nothing but the chances that these promos won’t be available in the future are slim.

Celsius is essentially a platform where users put their coins and get high APY in return for lending their coins. They are one of the better known platform for doing just that. Their token, CEL, currently has a market cap of around 1.5 billion dollar. CEL peaked at around $7.7 and is currently priced at around $6.2.

Typically their referral bonus is $40 in Bitcoin (BTC) but currently it has been bumped to $50 for both referrer and referred. This is only available for new users and all you need to do is (a) use the code when signing up, (b) transfer $400 or more into Celsius, and (c) hold the money (i.e. not transfer out) for 30 days.

Note: I have written this article keeping those in mind who have never done anything in crypto. I think the article will give you all the information you need and then some more.

Obviously transferring and holding a volatile crypto (like BTC) is risky because in 30 day period your $400 worth of crypto could be worth $200. There is also the risk factor of losing money while sending crypto between exchanges (because it was sent to the wrong address). So I will suggest you do two things:

1. You want to look into buying USD Coin (USDC) which is supposed to be 1:1 with US dollar. USDC is currently #8 coin by market cap and you can see that since its inception in 2018 it has not lost its peg (price chat at coinmarketcap). The folks behind USDC are the likes of Circle and Coinbase (now a public company) and it is often suggested as the “best” stablecoin in the crypto community.
2. You may want to buy USDC within the Celsius app. This purchase is apparently made through Gem (something like Plaid) and the cheapest (and obviously the slowest) option is ACH transfer with an unfortunate 0.1% in fees. You can read more about fees regarding buying within the Celsius app in their official site.

The ACH fee is practically irreverent because once USDC is settled into your account (takes around 5 days), you will start getting paid interest on weekly basis. The interest I acquired over a month period more than paid for the fee it cost to load $400. To be precise, I was getting paid $0.65 per week for holding $400.21 in USDC and you can see that purchasing 400.1 USDC costs $402.80. You will clearly make more than $2.8 in fee within a month period.

After 30 days period is over, your $50 in BTC will be unlocked, at which point you can transfer BTC as well as USDC to an off-ramp exchange (i.e. where you can convert crypto to cash and withdraw).

Celsius is nice enough to pay the transfer out fees. For example, Celsius covered $5.24 in “gas fee” when I withdrew $402.73 in USDC and it covered $4.72 in “gas fee” when I withdrew $85.32 in BTC.

Above you can see screenshots of me transferring out from Celsius and below you will see screenshots of receiving same amount of coin in an exchange. It is normal for some coins, like BTC, to take hours to get to the exchange you are sending money to. If you are doing this process for the first time, I suggest sending small amount at first (Celsius is paying for fee anyway) and once you see that the amount was received, you can send the rest out. Also note that different coins should be sent into different addresses (the apps will make this clear to you while sending and receiving coins).

Once you have the money and are ready to transfer out, I suggest asking yourself if you want to exchange coins for dollar or do you want to continue to earn interest? If you are chasing APY then I might suggest reading this post as it talks about getting up to 14% APY on USDC. Obviously there are also some easy signup bonus to be had like $25 from Voyager for trading $100 (could be USDC).

Now, if you just want to get cash, I suggest you transfer in USDC into Coinbase. There is no fee for selling or buying USDC in Coinbase. After selling USDC for US dollar, you can transfer out the dollar into your connected bank account. Alternatively, you may want to hold on to this money and use it for 4% crypto earning Coinbase debit card.

Unfortunately, Coinbase will charge you a 2.49% in fee for selling BTC. This translates to $1.245 in fee for selling exactly $50 worth of BTC. However, once you get BTC in Coinbase, you can transfer it to Coinbase pro and sell the coin for “only” 0.5% in fee. Coinbase pro does not cost money nor does it require you to create another account. Transfer between “regular” Coinbase and Coinbase pro is instant and free.

Now if you want to get even lower fees, you may want to try Binance.US (0.1% fee) or Kraken (0.25% fee). Sure the hassle of signing up for so many things for $50 might not be worth it, but if you are going to be doing crypto signups often then saving a little bit here and there helps.

Closing Thoughts

I have already signed up family members to Celsius, with my own referral of course. If you’ve a few family members you can refer, then this bonus ($50 for you + $50 for them) becomes fairly attractive for the hassle of moving $400.

The good thing is you don’t have to sign them up for the exchanges as they can send money from their Celsius to your a an exchange account belonging to you.

Disclaimer: not a financial advise.