As Celsius Crashes & Burns, Midas.Investments Doesn’t Seem Too Dodgy Anymore
Crypto is a minefield, so imagine how happy I am to have found a platform that grows my crypto portfolio but also my love for it.
IT’S BEEN A MONTH OR SO since my initial review of Midas.Investments and I’ve become so comfortable with the platform that I’ve effectively moved the majority of my crypto holdings from CDC and into Midas.
But Why?
While it’s true that Midas (like almost every other platform) recently lowered its rates due to market conditions that are beyond its control, Midas still offers the best deal for investors in crypto. You can earn:
9% APY on Bitcoin (BTC)
10% APY on Ethereum (ETH)
14% APY on Stablecoins
Compare this to whatever paltry rates CDC now offers its users.
Most crucially, however, is that unlike other platforms Midas pays investors interest daily and with no lock-in period.
I really can’t overstate the flexibility this provides users; as it means you’re able to withdraw and swap your tokens/coins at will. Bear in mind, however, that BTC withdrawals are processed twice a day (to minimise fees) so they may take up to 12 hours to arrive.
But I’m not here to promote the platform. Instead, I want to offer a comprehensive assessment for why I think Midas is GREAT!
The Most Obvious First; They Didn’t Meddle With LUNA/Anchor/UST
Midas offers several Stablecoins on its platform to hold and earn interest on. These are USDC, DAI, BUSD, and USDT. Despite all the hype and interest around Terra’s LUNA and UST, Midas held back.
This was while almost everyone else (including our highly regarded friends at the Bankless newsletter) was abandoning token fundamentals — apparently blinded by the lucrative 20% returns UST was claiming to offer.
What’s more… following the LUNA/UST fallout, Midas has started taking steps to phase out USDT from its platform in favour of USDC.
👏 👏 👏
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Tether’s USDT is a bomb waiting to implode. Therefore, I think it’s fair to say that this is something we can all get behind and is a clear illustration that the brains behind Midas actually know what they’re doing.
Speaking Of The Brains 🧠 At Midas, How Exactly Do They Generate Yield?
This seems to be the thing that keeps most people from investing with Midas.
It just seems to be “too good to be true.”
Therefore, I think it’s important that we go over some of the platform’s fundamentals so that you guys can understand how Midas is able to generate these kind of returns since 2018.
I’ll do this in bullet-points because I think (for most people anyway) bullet-points make things infinitely easier to understand:
The best analogy I can think of is that Midas is effectively a crypto CeDeFi asset management firm… in that it’s a centralised platform that makes use of its team’s expertise and trading algorithms to choose the best investment strategies to generate maximum yield in DeFi
According to CEO Trevor, Midas has more than 12 investment strategies that it uses for different market conditions
Some of these strategies rely on Midas leveraging your crypto as liquidity to various protocols in the DeFi space
DeFi products Midas invests in include lending and borrowing, hedged token farming, DeFi yield vaults, and UniSwap V3 concentrated liquidity provider
Crucially, to avoid impermanent loss, Midas will use its expertise and algorithms to hedge the “bets” that it makes so that the original position is always covered
For example, Badger appears to be one protocol that Midas invests through.
Researching Badger reveals that Midas would be able to generate 117.62% APY on a ETH/iBTC pair on Swapr and 23.50% APY on a BADGER/wBTC pair on Badger’s native app.
Of course, DeFi is a horrible minefield and there will always be some inherent risk involved, which is why you must always do thorough research before you select a protocol to use and a liquidity pair/tokens.
But that’s the magic 🪄 of the Midas investment team. It does the work on your behalf — constantly on the lookout for lucrative investment opportunities that offer the best balance of ROI and risk.
With regards to Badger, for example, Midas CEO Trevor has stated that the decision to go with Badger was largely because of their full and over-collateralised treasury… meaning that they’d be able to cover any losses in the event of a security breach. Needless to say, Midas also regularly assesses the security health of various protocols and investment instruments.
I think it’s important to note that Midas has been delivering great returns without fault since 2018.
The Base Yield Strategy
So… Midas recently announced that it will be temporarily tapering down its involvement in DeFi. This is largely because of the current unpredictable market conditions. For the foreseeable future, Midas will generate yield through their new and innovative Base Yield Strategy that’s specifically tailored for a bearish market like the one we’re in.
This is how it works:
When you deposit BTC and ETH on the platform, Midas will use this BTC and ETH to borrow Stablecoins (USDC, DAI, and BUSD — don’t worry, no USDT/UST).
The borrowing will always be 200% over-collateralised and be constantly monitored by Midas’ team of experts.
It will then use those stables to reinvest profits back into the native asset and generate yield
This is a remarkably safe and effective investment strategy because it protects the underlying assets (BTC, ETH), which will be used to borrow yield-generating Stablecoins like USDC, DAI, and BUSD.
How The Fuck Do “I” Know All Of This?
Am I a part of Midas? Absolutely not.
The reason I know all of this (and also why I’ve actually warmed up and learnt to trust the platform and its team) is because Midas also has excellent communication.
As Midas investors, we actually get regular updates from the team. The team is active on both Reddit and Discord.
There is a real community feel on both platforms that I haven’t felt in crypto before (people are actually fucking nice for a change!). On Discord, people talk about crypto, take part in Midas contests and giveaways, play poker games online together, and share pictures of their pets. It’s really fucking awesome.
We also get regular updates from Anya and the CEO (Trevor) frequently appears live on the Midas YouTube channel to answer questions and discuss future plans for the platform.
There is also a wealth of resources on the Midas website for anyone who is vaguely interested in crypto and doesn’t know much about it! Rather than promote the platform, these resources appear purely educational — and I respect that!
And don’t get me started on these very neat BTC, ETH and DeFi weekly market analysis reports that we get every week that offer practical advice on whether we should buy, sell or hold.
Midas really wants to make a name for itself as a prime asset management firm in the crypto space that generates passive income for its investors and helps them achieve financial freedom.
This is something that I can absolutely get behind and be passionate about.
The Midas Native Token ($MIDAS)
When rebalancing my crypto portfolio a couple of weeks back, I actually made a sizeable investment in $MIDAS. Surprisingly, I’ve already seen a healthy return on that investment that will help cover some of the pretty huge losses I made holding CDC’s CRO.
But yea, besides being a great platform, Midas also has a great native token with some strong fundamentals. The maximum supply of $MIDAS is 5,000,000 tokens.
You can purchase $MIDAS on DeFi Fantom protocols like SpiritSwap and BombSwap — or buy $MIDAS via the Midas platform through their native Swap functionality (did I mention that Midas’ Swap works like a dream and offers an ultra-fast and very cheap of exchanging cryptocurrencies? Because it does).
Despite the “bear-market” that were in, the price of $MIDAS has seen tremendous appreciation in the past 3-6 months. This is likely to continue to grow as the Midas team is committed to buying $MIDAS from the market for its regular Payout Split Program.
The idea is that, on a regular basis, Midas will spend 10% of the total interest it paid to its investors that month to buy $MIDAS from the free market.
From an investor perspective, $MIDAS is essentially a hedge against the growth of the platform.
In other words, as the platform continues to grow and the assets that are under its management do too, Midas may find itself in the future having to reduce the interest rates it pays users. However, holding $MIDAS would be an effective hedge against that as Midas would be spending much more cash buying back its native token due to now having more AUM.
In its most recent buyback, Midas announced (literally, yesterday) that it will be buying back 4,651 $MIDAS tokens.
It’s important to appreciate that this model is unusual in the crypto space, because it’s the closest that I’ve seen to a shareholder model where the platform is committed to sharing its profits with $MIDAS holders (indirectly) by purchasing $MIDAS on a regular basis and significantly appreciating the price of the native token. These buybacks happen frequently (every week or so).
Still unconvinced? That’s OK!
Why don’t you ask any questions you have in the comments and I’ll get back to you with some (hopefully reassuring) answers.
Alternatively, you can visit the Midas website to learn everything you need right from the source and don’t forget to check out my first (much briefer) review where I cover some basics I didn’t discuss here.
N.B. Note that all links to the Midas website are my personal referral links. I include these so I can justify providing this content and analysis for you guys free of charge because well… times are hard and good content should be worth something. Should you choose not to use my referral link, that’s absolutely fine… here’s a plain link to the Midas website.