Bitfinex’s latest integration to allow passive income from Bitcoin, Ethereum holdings

A week after the launch of EOS, Litecoin, and Polkadot Perpetual Swaps, Bitfinex has announced the launch of a new yield product.

Bitfinex users can now begin to earn rewards on their crypto-holdings following a new partnership with Celsius Network. The integration in question will allow customers of the exchange platform to create a wallet with Celsius and manage it through Bitfinex’s platform.

. @CelsiusNetwork, a cryptocurrency lending and borrowing platform, is now integrated to the Bitfinex Platform!Manage your Celsius account through Bitfinex and earn a return of up to 6.2% APY on Bitcoin and up to 9.65% on Ethereum.Discover more ⬇️https://t.co/iRIvBmpx1U pic.twitter.com/VyhjWPh0bH— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) October 14, 2020

Through their Celsius accounts, users will be able to earn a return of up to 6.2% APY on their Bitcoin holdings, while holders of Ethereum will earn a rate of up to 9.65%.

According to Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex,

“We expect this offering to appeal to customers that have bought Bitcoin as a long-term store of value, and who also want to earn on their assets while they hold.”

Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius, also commented on the announcement,

“Our integration with Bitfinex extends the mission and focus of both companies to bring the next 100 million people into the crypto community and do it while we do good before we all do well. Celsius’s commitment to reward our users with 80% of the value we create is now available to all Bitfinex customers”

Bitfinex users who open a Celsius wallet are free to withdraw their crypto from Celsius at any time, with no lock-in periods and no fees on deposits or withdrawals, something that should be an advantage over most reward-generating products that come with withdrawal restrictions, fees, and/or penalties.

In offering these yield products, crypto-exchanges like Bitfinex are not only capitalizing on the DeFi craze of 2020, but also the pitfalls of traditional banking amidst a global recession.

Traditional banking products offer very little in terms of interest, often ranging between 0% -1%. However, the high APYs offered by yield farming across DeFi comes with its own set of risks, making the barrier to entry quite high for new crypto-users.

Huobi, another prominent crypto-exchange, offered a yield product similar to Bitfinex last month. In the aforementioned case, users of Huobi’s savings products received 8% APY on USDT and 3.5% APY on Bitcoin.