Daily Archives: May 5, 2022

As the crypto market grows and enjoys broader participation from the global investment community, the products and services offered must be increasingly competitive, easy to use, and more robust by the day. Not only must there be many options for active traders and investors, but today there also must be plenty to satisfy the appetite of passive investors who want to put their money to work without doing extra work themselves.

Three platforms stand out as services that offer several ways for passive investors and traders to earn income without having to put in as much time, effort, or even capital to become successful. The platforms are as follows: PrimeXBT, Gate.io, and eToro. 

Passive Income Opportunities Crypto Platform Comparison

Here is a direct comparison between each of these three competitors, along with a conclusion on which of the three reigns supreme. 

PrimeXBT

PrimeXBT is one of the platforms that put passive investing on the map. Once the DeFi trend exploded, it was among the first to make DeFi easy by connecting its platform directly to top industry protocols. By doing so, users are able to stake their idle crypto assets and earn variable APYs of up to 14%, depending on current market conditions. PrimeXBT also offers a way to activate COV token membership that boosts earnings in yield accounts by up to 2x.

The COV token is the native cryptocurrency of the Covesting ecosystem. By activating the memberships mentioned above, users can receive several benefits such as lowered trading fees or increased followings. Covesting copy trading lets skilled users become strategy managers who have their performance tracked within the global Covesting leaderboards. Followers then use this information to find a trader they like, copy their trades, and then sit back and profit.

PrimeXBT is a margin trading platform at heart, so strategy managers get access to the professional trading tools provided, such as leverage and long and short positions. There are also more than 100 trading instruments across crypto, forex, commodities, and stock indices. This means that the Covesting copy trading experience can lead to significant profits in a short amount of time. PrimeXBT packs a boat load more features under just one roof.

Gate.io

Gate.io is a crypto exchange with a significant focus on buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. However, like many platforms today, they also offer a ton of additional features on top of exchange services. Other services include an NFT marketplace, data analysis, cloud mining, and more. 

In terms of what is available for users to earn income passively, there are liquidy mining services where users can provision their digital assets as liquidity and receive crypto rewards in return. There is also a single-asset liquidity lending service that provides a decent return on any borrowed assets. Parachain slot auctions also let users earn a decent reward for participation.

The meat and potatoes of the Gate.io experience for passive investors –– like PrimeXBT –– is more about the copy trading tools. Copy trading is part of what Gate.io refers to as their Smart Quantitative Trading solution. What this boils down to is traders sticking to a specific type of strategy template to provide strict results for users. The end result is a highly confusing system that creates a new copy trading strategy for each copied trader, essentially filling the ecosystem with unworthy duplicates.

eToro

eToro is another highly reputable crypto trading platform and cryptocurrency exchange that offers a variety of competitive products and services that are on par with the rest of the list. eToro spends ample budget on its marketing efforts, pairing with the likes of Alec Baldwin for US-focused TV commercials. 

The platform itself is highly commercialized, which puts added emphasis on the social network aspect of its copy trading offering. The version of copy trading on eToro works much like the other two platforms, where users can find another user based on performance and then copy their trades. However, with eToro, each user can also use the platform as a soapbox, which means there is a lot of noise to filter out. Many like to learn more about the trader they are putting money behind, but a lot of times, these traders leverage their social skills –– not their trading skills –– to grow their audience.

eToro is also light on other products and services compared to the others on the list. While there is a crypto staking service that provides what they refer to as “generous rates,” the lack of clarity around what this generosity is makes the offer questionable at best. Given the rates across the industry, there is no denying that a return on investment is possible, but to what degree?

Conclusion: PrimeXBT Provides The Most Profit Opportunities 

In this comparative review, we aren’t worried about the active trading tools, referral programs, and other areas of interest for users of these platforms. We are solely focused on comparing the passive interest-generating options available to users.

In that regard, PrimeXBT wins hands down due to the simplicity of the Covesting copy trading module compared to other platforms. The convoluted experience of its competitors makes PrimeXBT shine for its ability to design solutions that work for pros and novices alike. Yield accounts offering as much as 14% helps push the platform over the edge as the clear winner.

Smart quantitative trading sounds buzzworthy and all, and having social media feeds integrated into a copy trading experience might seem attractive, but these additions just get in the way of profits. With PrimeXBT, you only have to pay attention to the performance of your portfolio – and you can do it from anywhere in the world from a free mobile app for Android and iOS devices.

On-chain data shows the Bitcoin funding rates have observed a rise again, suggesting that another long squeeze may be in store for the crypto.

Bitcoin Funding Rates Show Relatively High Positive Value

As explained by an analyst in a CryptoQaunt post, the current positive funding rates may mean the price could observe a decline soon.

The “funding rate” is an indicator that measures the periodic fee that Bitcoin futures traders are paying each other.

When the value of this metric is greater than zero, it means long traders are paying a premium to short investors to hold on to their positions right now. This trend therefore suggests that the majority sentiment is bullish at the moment.

On the other hand, negative values of the indicator imply that a bearish sentiment is more dominant as shorts are paying longs currently.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin funding rates (72-hour MA) in the year 2022 so far:

Looks like the value of the metric has surged up recently | Source: CryptoQuant

As you can see in the above graph, the quant has marked the points where the Bitcoin funding rates reached a peak during the last few months.

It seems like shortly after relatively high positive funding rates occurred, the price of the crypto observed a steep decline.

Related Reading | Five Months Of Fear: When Will The Bitcoin Carnage End?

A long squeeze is a mass leverage flush event where long liquidations cascade together. Such a squeeze can sharply drive the price down and the above instances seem to have been marked by this squeeze.

A short squeeze, on the contrary, can rather uplift the price. The analyst therefore argues that the Bitcoin market will require negative funding rates if the price has to observe any real improvements.

However, as longs are currently dominating the futures market, a long squeeze will need to happen to take the funding rate down and pile up shorts.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Institutional Outflows Near One-Year Highs, More Downside Coming?

But with that, the price of the crypto may also suffer another plunge down just like the instances earlier in the year.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $39.5k, down 1% in the last seven days. Over the past month, the crypto has lost 15% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the price of the coin over the last five days.

The price of BTC seems to have observed a sharp rise in the past twenty-four hours | Source: BTCUSD on TradngView

Bitcoin has been struggling for many months now and the price has recently shown no signs of any real recovery as it remains stuck below the $40k level.

Featured image from Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com

According to a report published on Thursday, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) explained that it acquired 37,863 bitcoin worth more than $1.4 billion through two over-the-counter deals. The LFG now holds 80,394 bitcoin in its reserves currently worth just under $3 billion using today’s exchange rates.

Luna Foundation Guard Scoops up 37,863 Bitcoin

On May 5, 2022, the Luna Foundation Guard reported that it purchased 37,863 bitcoin (BTC), worth a touch over $1.4 billion at the time of writing. LFG, the non-profit based out of Singapore aims to have $10 billion of stablecoin reserves by the end of the third quarter of this year. While the organization has acquired a total of 80,394 bitcoin, LFG also purchased $100 million in avalanche (AVAX) to bolster the algorithmic stablecoin UST’s decentralized forex reserves.

While 42,530.828 BTC can be seen on the blockchain via LFG’s public address, the 37,863 bitcoin purchased were acquired via two over-the-counter (OTC) deals. According to the LFG press release, $1 billion worth of UST was traded with the prime broker Genesis for the BTC, and it purchased the other $500 million from the hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

Terraform Labs Founder Says UST’s Decentralized Forex Reserve Stash Is Aligned With the Bitcoin Standard

Do Kwon, the cofounder and CEO of Terraform Labs told CNBC during the announcement that the pegged currency’s reserves are aligned with the Bitcoin standard.

“For the first time, you’re starting to see a pegged currency that is attempting to observe the Bitcoin standard,” Kwon remarked. “It’s making a strong directional bet that keeping a lot of those foreign reserves in the form of a digital native currency is going to be a winning recipe,” the Terraform Labs founder added. The press release further notes that LFG’s purchase was once worth $1.5 billion, but today it’s reduced in value to $1.4 billion worth of BTC.

LFG’s current bitcoin wallet now holds more than Tesla’s bitcoin reserves, which is approximately 42,902 bitcoin, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. With 80,394 bitcoin, LFG’s stash is only 48,824 BTC away from catching up to Microstrategy’s 129,218 BTC. Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC) slipped down to a low of $36,520 on Thursday and the leading crypto asset is down 5% over the last 24 hours.

“The jury’s still out on the effectiveness on the subject, but I think it is symbolic in the sense now that we live in a time where there’s excess money printing across the board and when monetary policies [are] highly politicized that there are citizens that are self-organizing to try to bring systems back to a sounder paradigm of money,” Kwon concluded on Thursday.

What do you think about the Luna Foundation Guard scooping up 37,863 bitcoin? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.