Celsius Network: More than just a Crypto lending platform

Let’s face it since crypto emerged, it has been consistently challenging the traditional financial system. Whether from trading to exchanging the assets, it also entered into finance — lending and depositing the assets for better interest returns. The best one currently in the market s Celsius Network.

After the emergence of Smart Contract features on Ethereum Blockchain, many changes and new methods have developed in financial services. DeFi and DAO are worth mentioning innovations made possible because of Smart Contracts. 

On the one hand, DAOs are changing the format of organizational structure, which was centralized but turned it into a decentralized autonomous organization where the decisions are in the hands of the community. On the other hand, Decentralized Finance or DeFi changes the finance landscape. 

Almost everything that traditional finance has done and could have done is possible on DeFi. Many crypto lending platforms have grabbed the opportunity and disrupted the finance market, which was earlier limited to only traditional financial institutions like Banks. 

Although crypto lending platforms are working in both centralized and decentralized manners, they call it a centralized finance platform or decentralized platform. 

Celsius Network

The network with a leading retail savings platform serves interest-bearing and borrowing accounts. It facilitates the loan service against fiat assets and is one of the market’s leading Centralized finance lending platforms. 

It adopted a community-first approach, and following that, it avails 80% of its generated revenue back to its users. The reallocation of the revenue to users gets in the form of some additional earnings on their deposits, savings and borrowing. 

No doubt, the platform’s growth is quite impressive, and the reasons are made clear as it consists of attractive interest rates, very low operation fees, and a strong community. 

The app of the cryptocurrency lending platform has ten specific cryptos with facilities to be converted into another thirty digital assets. A working model and capital generation can be suited best for long term investors and those interested in passive income. 

Short overview of its history and origin Of Celsius Network

To provide an alternative to traditional financial institutions that is fully community-oriented, Alex Mashinksky and Daniel Leon founded the Celsius Network in 2017. 

In 2018 the network went for an ICO and successfully raised over $50 million. Using the fund for developing the product and building the team for its operation, they launched their wallet in 2019. The wallet made it possible for users to deposit their coins, whether as collateral to get loans in fiat currencies or to make them available for loans to earn interest on the deposit.

Since then, Celsius Network has seen massive growth; for instance, the active users in the first year grew by over 800%. Since its launch, its average weekly growth has been approximately 3.06%, showing its consistently growing. Till August 2021, the platform was handling over 950,000 users and total community deposits of approx $20 billion. 

Unique features of Celsius Network

Let’s start with its core competency, the financing system. Celsius is a CeFi platform that allows interest-bearing and cryptocurrency lending. Its primary purpose is to provide financial services such as investing, lending and borrowing for interest and operates on a decentralized public blockchain. Its usability is so simple that it can be accessed via any desktop or mobile application. 

The interest rates it provides are best in the space. For instance, it claims that the platform provides interest up to 22%. But, hold your horses; it does not allow this much interest yield on every other crypto; instead, it’s only limited to some.  

Considering some usual cryptocurrencies, on Bitcoin (BTC), it provides up to 7.8% and on Ethereum (ETH) up to 6.7% with some terms and conditions. Generally, on stablecoins, the network provides better interest than flagship cryptocurrencies. For instance, Celsius gives interest rates up to 10.7% on stablecoins like Tether (USDT0 and USD Coin (USDC). 

No offline or physical headquarter means no intermediaries such as loan officers or personnel to overview the processes and workings. Once the user becomes a network member, it’s then easy for him to get loan approvals at discounts. 

It becomes convenient for those who want to put their crypto assets as deposits in case they do not withdraw them for a while. Their deposit would be safe under the network’s security, and on top of that, they can get interested in their deposited assets. So clearly, it uses almost every aspect possible in DeFi. 

Another advantage the network has is its CEL token. The token is more of Celsius’ reward token for customer loyalty. However, its primary function is to be used as an exchange medium across the network. But the worst part, these tokens are not available to buy by US residents. 

Talking about earning through the token, it works in three ways that are calculated based on:

• The first one is the interest you earn on your deposits
• CEL token as loyalty rewards to its users
• The crypto assets deposited on the Celsius network wallet

Celsius Network uses CelPay, a unique platform feature that allows users to pay in cryptos to their friends and family members. And the best part, no one is necessarily required to have a Celsius wallet to use CelPay. 

Price Prediction for Celsius token CEL

It’s obvious that the bigger players in the market either in the stock or crypto market, tend to make good returns in the long term despite momentary ups and downs. The different analysis by exchange firms and prediction agencies shows different predictions as follows. 

For instance CoinCodex mostly predicted CEL to go bearish more than bullish but others have showcased mixed reactions for CEL price predictions. 

WalletInvestor estimated the price for Celsius CEL token to dip down to $0.309 by the end of this year. It further expected it to drop more than that for year 2025 that is $0.033. 

But DigitalCoin stated that the price of Celsius crypto could show a bullish trend for this year which is $4.3. For long term prediction it suggested $6.8 for 2025 and $13.6 by the year 2029. 

PricePrediction also expected CEL average price to hit $4.46 in 2022 while for 2025 it may reach upto $13.16 and in 2030 it assumed to reach upto $82.79. 

Some aspects where Celsius still lacks

Although Celsius network has robust DeFi services with more than 30 cryptocurrencies and operational reach across 150 countries, some aspects are also there where it still needs some upgrades and changes. 

First, it is centralized finance which may not attract decentralized finance enthusiasts. As discussed earlier, 30 cryptocurrencies are available, but still, it’s significantly less when we see thousands of existing cryptocurrencies globally.   

Also, the platform only handles depositing, lending and borrowing operations that lack trading and exchange services. It has to use third-party vendors for its operations, which again makes it dependent and centralized. And the most significant concern, as we already discussed, is the unavailability of CEL token US citizens, which is absurd when we see the number of crypto users in the US.