BlockFi is Now Managing Over $53 Million of Crypto Deposits

Crypto lending company BlockFi has gathered over $53 million in client crypto assets under its management, the company announced in a blog post on April 23.

The company, which was able to gather $18 million of Bitcoin and Ethereum for the past month, has announced its intention to implement some policy changes starting May 1. Specifically, BlockFi intends to lower the minimum required balance to earn interest on Bitcoin from 1 BTC to 0.5 BTC. BlockFi’s blog post also reads:

“After launching BIA, a lot of users reached out to our team asking that we drop our minimum eligible balance to earn interest. We’re excited to let our community know that BTC balances of 0.5 BTC and up will now begin earning interest on their deposits. And as an added bonus, we’re applying this retroactively as of April 1st. We expect to lower our minimum balance further in the near term.”

As a result of dropping demand to borrow ETH, BlockFi will also be lowering the maximum balance for which it pays 6.2% annual interest on Ethereum from 500 ETH to 250 ETH. All balances over this limit will earn only 2% rate. The company explains:

“BlockFi’s ability to pay interest to our clients is based on crypto market lending conditions. As we’ve touched on previously, we exclusively work with institutional counterparties to generate this yield. Over the past month, demand for borrowing ETH has dropped, and as a result, ETH tier rates will be adjusted in tandem.”

This is not the first time BlockFi has amended their policies. Back in March the company announced in a blog post that it will be lowering the interest rates for their biggest cryptocurrency deposit accounts. Balances of up to 25 BTC or 500 ETH would still earn the 6.2%, but balances over this limit would earn a 2% rate. According to BlockFi’s terms and conditions, the company can change the interest rate at its discretion.

The announcement also states that BlockFi has expanded its operations all the way to India, making its services available globally, with the exception of US, UK., and EU sanctioned territories. The company will also start applying a fiat withdrawal fee of 0.0025 BTC and 0.0015 ETH in April, but will reportedly keep all withdrawals submitted prior to that free.