Heard about the insane 20% interest rates some of us are earning on DeFi platforms such as Compound? Got FOMO and want to get in but overwhelmed with all the technical jargon? Well, my friend, you have come to the right place. I am going to outline in layman’s terms exactly step by step what you need to do to get started earning interest.

The article will be broken into 4 sections

1. DeFi and Stable Coins Definitions
2. How to Obtain Stable Coins
3. The Step by Step Process
4. Risks

1. DeFi and Stable Coin Definitions

Firstly there are 2 concepts you need to understand to start of…

You have a great idea for an app and are trying to figure out what the monetisation model is going to look like? What do you do?

Well the traditional ways you would monetise your app would fall into one or more of these 8 categories:

1. ADVERTISING

By displaying third party ads.

2. LEAD GENERATION AND AFFILIATE MARKETING

Promoting others products and earn a commission.

3. SELLING DATA

Collect and sell users data from within the platform

4. TRANSACTION FEES

Taking a fee from users transactions.

5. FREEMIUM

The basic functionality is free but users who want advanced features have to pay for those. …

DeFi platforms are quickly becoming one of the most used Dapps in the blockchain ecosystem. The more people discover alternative investment strategies the more popular the DeFi movement will become. The potential for decentralised finance to compete against traditional banks is immense. There are many services that can be disrupted. Hopefully In the future you won’t need a bank to act as the intermediary for all your investment needs. Alternatives are coming, especially for the unbanked.

Facebook and Libra will be facing an uphill battle with regulators as it aims to create its own cryptocurrency to be used within a closed network with other large corporations as participants. I have no personal view that they should fail, in fact the creation of Libra legitimises the DeFi concept as a viable alternative to traditional banking. The biggest organisations in the world are now starting to realise the importance that Cryptocurrency and DeFi will play in the world. …

The decentralised finance (DeFi) space in Crypto is quickly evolving with new platforms popping up all the time. Because each platform tend to be independently operated the interest and borrowing rates are different to each other. This presents a good opportunity for keen investors to capitalise on the differences and make some relatively low risk passive interest income.

There is only 1 prerequisite for this and that is you need to hold some crypto asset to use as collateral.

DeFi Vs Centralised Finance platforms

I would like to first point out that we should not be confused and classify all the various lending platforms under DeFi. A platform that is owned, controlled and run by a company is not exactly a DeFi platform. Some of the more well known of these would be Celsius, Nexo and BlockFi. These are custodial based financial institutions that hold your deposited crypto for most likely fractional reserve banking. This does not mean that they are not legitimate businesses. …

I have been into with various Crypto Lending platforms for awhile now and thought i’d share some of my thoughts and experiences on each. Some of these are Decentralised Finance (DeFi) platforms while others are not.

If you don’t know what Crypto Lending is about it is essentially a place where you can lend out your Cryptocurrency and earn interest. Cryptocurrencies typically accepted will be Bitcoin, Ether or even Stable Coins. The same platforms allow you to also borrow cryptocurrencies if you have provided collateral. …

Successful investors know that over time it is not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. In Cryptocurrency this becomes even more important when we are still in the early stages of the technology. 2018 saw All Time High’s for many coins and then over 90% crashes in prices. Many ICO’s that came out are trading below their ICO price.

When it comes to Cryptocurrency people may just associate Crypto with Bitcoin but there are a wide variety of crypto that differ in their intended use.

If you are involved with Cryptocurrency the approach I take is to diversify within the asset class. Bitcoin and Ethereum are nice and easy to get into as a first step but then a wide range of options exist to further diversify into. …

Throughout all of this crypto Bear market I have seen numerous so called “experts” give their prediction on the price of Bitcoin.

The chart shows how ridiculously far off these people have been. Nobody can accurately predict the price of Bitcoin and if they try you should just not take that person seriously.

I am at the point now where if a so called expert gives a price prediction they automatically go in my shit talker basket. An expert that gives a price prediction on Bitcoin is IMO not an expert and should be dismissed.

In the current Bitcoin markets where exchange trading is so low any big sell or buy orders will instantly affect the price. And not just by a small margin either. Within a 15–30 min window the price can go 10% in either direction. How can you give a price prediction on something if it behaves this way? …

As I write this there is a live opportunity that is available for savvy traders to buy the ICONOMI (ICN) token on exchanges for slightly less than 0.0017 Ether. Next month ICONOMI will buy back their own token for 0.0019 as part of a restructure.

That represents a profit of about 11–12% in a couple weeks.

So what’s the catch? Why is this arbitrage opportunity still around?

Well to answer that we need to break things down and look at things in parts. Even though Iconomi has been around for awhile it is not widely talked about nor does it have a huge online following. Not many are tracking the progress of ICN since it has fallen out of the top 100 coins on coinmarketcap. I believe that due to the current fear and uncertainty in the market people are also taking a much more cautious and sceptical approach on announcements that are made. …