One born into anarchy and chaos that never knew its parents, but that somehow conquered the world.

One born of well-to-do parents with money, backed by assets and claiming to represent the world’s reserve currency.

Obviously different. But how? And why? What’s the future for this odd couple, forever intertwined by exchange pair activity?

Bitcoin Banter

To Recap…

Bitcoin is a digital asset created by “Satoshi Nakamoto”. The aim was to create an entirely new global currency that wasn’t controlled by anyone. The Bitcoin protocol allows anyone with the (now expensive) equipment to mine new coins and verify transactions. The total supply was set at 21 million bitcoins, of which 18 million have already been mined, though reports suggest only 14 million bitcoins will be in circulation, the rest being lost.

This lack of central control and inherent scarcity is what set Bitcoin apart from Central Bank currencies (fiat), which could be issued whenever the bank felt like it.

Nakamoto’s real genius wasn’t necessarily in the concept of Blockchain (that existed earlier), but in the way he solved the problem of “consensus” – getting untrusted, anonymous nodes in a network to agree on what reality is. He managed to create a system where a random group of greedy people can still be forced to co-operate for the greater good… which is a definite achievement.

In a centralised currency, the sole source of truth is the central bank: access to its systems is given to trusted companies and individuals with varying levels of permission.

Bitcoin is trustless and permissionless and the source of authority is the shared decision of at least 50% of the computers in a network. “What the heck just happened?” is a consensus.

Miners are kept honest by allowing them to complete brute force mathematical calculations to compete for new coins (“mining”) and offering smaller rewards for validating transactions.

“Consensus” is how blockchains work generally, though they don’t all use the same mechanisms. Whichever method is used, smaller blockchains are more vulnerable to a 50% attack: when one party gets 50% control of the mining power (“proof-of-work”) or the locked-in value (“proof-of-stake”). If this happens, one party can literally attack history. This is called a “50% attack”.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and most of the top 10 cryptos are now big enough for this to be impossible (it’s too expensive and impractical), which is one reason why they’re technically trusted.

USDC, see?

USDC is a digital asset that’s meant to stand in for the US dollar in decentralised blockchain systems. It was created in 2018 by Circle Finance, in partnership with the Coinbase exchange. Goldman Sachs was one of the initial investors, too.

Most digital assets don’t make sense to most people unless you can say how much they’re worth in US dollars. Because a Central Bank Digital Currency version of the dollar doesn’t exist, stable versions (“stablecoins”) of real currencies are necessary. USDC wasn’t the first US dollar stand-in (Tether and DAI both came before it), but it is one of the most stable and best-financed.

Digital Dollars

Digital US dollars exist because most blockchains allow other digital assets to use their infrastructure. DAI lives on Ethereum, and Tether lived for most of its life near the Bitcoin blockchain (though there are versions of it on other blockchains now). USDC started as an Ethereum token and now exists on the Solana blockchain too.

Despite the fact that the blockchains they live on are decentralised, asset-backed digital dollars such as Tether and USDC are centralised: they’re owned by someone who is in full control of them.

USDC tokens aren’t mined but simply issued when appropriate, creating more of them. They can also be destroyed, a process known as “burning”. When US dollar tokens are redeemed for real dollars, you need to destroy a token to balance the books.

The promise to the world made when these tokens are issued is that the company issuing them has enough real dollars to back up the digital dollars. There has been much debate around “Tether” whether this backing is sufficient, but no one has the same concerns about USD Coin, which has an accounting firm producing a monthly report attesting to the status of the assets backing up the coin.

Useful!

Both Bitcoin and USDC are very different creatures, but they’re at their best when they’re working together, proving useful in the real world, often to the surprise of media commentators who often sound like “e-commerce is a fad” types, and misusing the word “Ponzi” repeatedly.

Bitcoin has become legal tender in some under-banked countries that have currencies continually being punished by the global markets. This brings its own problems because leveraged gamblers keep wrenching the price of Bitcoin all over the place.

Digital assets can also reach into war zones to keep economic activity flowing. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on your political beliefs. For observers worried about a global system that can unbank entire countries, Bitcoin, USDC and decentralised finance generally are a pointer to a future where it’s harder to link essential finance and politics so that normal citizens are penalised.

Spend, spend, spend, save, HODL

Bitcoin can also be directly spent now. Not only are there many payment processors for websites that accept crypto, but crypto debit cards are much more common than they used to be. They can be used in any shop that takes Visa or Mastercard, with the currency conversion happening at the point of sale. There’s still that pesky volatility though: how much are you going to pay for your coffee? When Bitcoin can drop 10% in 7 minutes, it’s a bit of a gamble!

Bitcoin is also something you can save and earn a yield on (just ask AQRU!). The decentralised finance market for lending and borrowing for both Bitcoin and US dollar stablecoins has gone through the roof, even as the crypto market has exhibited its usual volatility.

It’s not only useful for spending in actual shops (for instance, a crypto debit card could use a USDC wallet too), but it’s also useful for borrowing, lending, paying invoices and earning more USDC. It’s all the convenience of crypto with none of the knife-edge gut-wrenching feeling when it’s plummeting (though you also miss out on the occasional highs when it pumps).

Even if you don’t “save” bitcoin, you can merely HODL in the hope of benefits to come: because Bitcoin long-term has always tended to go up in value, and fears it would crash to zero have always been overblown.

Spreading the wings

Crypto, despite its growing pains, is finding more and more areas to reach into, with USDC following Bitcoin and crypto into brand new areas. More and more companies are setting up new ideas in all areas of finance. Some of these ideas are great, some are terrible, and time has a way of confirming which is which!

Despite the ups and downs of the crypto market, both Bitcoin and USD Coin have a bright future.

Traditional finance has begun to think about jumping ship to the blockchain, and the US’s hesitancy to embrace a digital currency as China has already done means a bright future for USDC.

Bitcoin is gaining recognition as a store of value and a speculative asset that is now in more and more regular Wall Street portfolios. It’s always one of the first things they sell when they panic, unfortunately. It’s also appearing in other investment portfolios worldwide as the potential gains look appealing in contrast to other stagnating traditional financial options.

USDC is doing a great job of giving institutions a trustable fiat option in the digital space.

The field of regulated security tokens is poised to be one of the growth areas of the future, and might not be long from taking off: New York Stock exchange has already invested in a security token company called tZero, for example. Since token prices generally tend to be denominated in US Dollars, there’s a big place for USDC as a bridge between the crypto ecosystem, the security token ecosystem and the regular financial system.

The post What is the difference between Bitcoin and USD Coin? appeared first on AQRU.

Throwing out “reputation-based lending” (basing a loan on the reputation and ability to repay of the borrower) has been one of the aspects of DeFi that’s worked against it, preventing the institutional borrowers that would be needed to elevate DeFi into the financial stratosphere from coming across.

As long as institutions need to commit more money than they’re borrowing in order to get a loan (“over-collateralisation”), that inefficient use of the company’s money was never going to be attractive. A company’s reputation is worth something, but a smart contract can never take that into account.

Enter Maple Finance.

Maple Finance was formed to dedicate itself to bringing the best practices of traditional finance, adding them to the natural advantages of the DeFi ecosystem. The result is a best-practice environment for institutional DeFi.

Maple has created lending pools that are run by industry experts, and a system of tokens and smart contracts that functions intelligently to balance reward for lenders vs protection against loan defaults. They are specifically for institutional borrowers, who are put through the DeFi equivalent of a credit check by “pool delegates” who then negotiate loan terms.

However, regular DeFi users can deposit money into pools and get high returns, with no minimum amount of investment and only a 90-day lock-in. At AQRU, we allow you to do this with even more ease.

Demand for Lending and Borrowing is Increasing

The DeFi space is growing, and the demand for lending (for better returns than traditional finance) and borrowing (easier access to capital) is also growing. The digital assets space has never been more full of start-up activity, and that all needs crypto funds to finance (USD Coins are always a favourite to borrow).

It’s not just America, though. The demand for lending and borrowing happens worldwide, with particular demand coming from financial centres such as Hong Kong.

Regulation Built-in

However, all this growth comes with an increase in scrutiny, and (more importantly) regulation, both from the US and from countries all over the world, each having its own different rules and regulations for institutional investment in crypto.

Luckily for institutions, regulatory compliance is built-in to Maple’s operation. For instance, the pool delegates do KYC (“Know Your Customer”) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering). That and assessing creditworthiness by actually looking at the company’s history are top-quality due diligence. This provides future-proofing for the crypto growth ahead, and an approach that big businesses and institutions find a lot more reassuring than the pseudo-anarchy sometimes encountered in regular DeFi.

You too can start investing easily in Maple Finance for an industry-leading return through AQRU. Just visit the website or download the app from the App Store or Google Play. Sign up, get verified, fund your account and then interest-earning Maple is just minutes away.

The post How Maple Finance is bringing DeFi to traditional clientele appeared first on AQRU.

USDC stands for USD Coin. It’s an example of a “stablecoin” – that is, a coin/token in crypto that has a value fixed to an external asset rather than being determined by buys/sells in the market. One USDC is worth $1, and is redeemable for a dollar, but because it’s a fully-fledged crypto token, it can be used to represent the dollar whenever transactions or exchanges are made.

Having representations of real-world assets such as the US dollar inside the blockchain/crypto ecosystem is vital, especially since there are very few government-issued stablecoins that do the same job. Because most spending is still done by converting to a country’s legal tender, it’s vital to know how much everything is worth. Of course, the dollar being the world’s reserve currency means that dollar values are all-important.

Understanding USDC

How do USDCs come to exist? How can something that appears out of thin air be worth a dollar?

USDCs are issued and/or burnt (the opposite of being issued) as the need arises. Unlike regular cryptos, they don’t need to be mined or earned, because when they’re issued, they are already backed by assets.

Although USDC is an open-source project with the code used to run it fully viewable, management of the coin is wholly centralised in the hands of Centre, a governing consortium founded by Coinbase (an exchange) and Circle (a fintech). Minting and burning are handled by Circle itself.

USDC and Regulation

USDC is the biggest regulated stablecoin.

According to Coinbase:

“Circle, the issuer of USDC is a money services business registered with FinCEN and 46 state regulators. Reserves are reported to the states pursuant to money transmission laws. Circle, and hence the reserve, is audited by Grant Thornton, a leading global accounting firm.”

It’s worth noting that every month Grant Thornton put out an “attestation” of USDC: a statement documenting what they believe is the status of the reserves behind the coin. That’s not an audit: audits take forever. An attestation is a statement by the auditors of what they believe the coin’s financial status is, working off the information they’re given. It has been audited previously though.

So, USDC is regulated and audited.

But what gives it an advantage over the regular dollar? Well, it’s fast. Transmitting USDC is much faster than transmitting regular US dollars. This means it is the fastest regulated and audited way to transfer dollar funds from A to B (and beyond).

Use cases

There are a few different reasons why you’d use USDC.

To escape from crypto volatility

It’s no secret that crypto coins and tokens are volatile because small markets (or relatively small markets) mean big trades have even bigger consequences. USDC is stable against a real-world value, and trading into it is like jumping from a fast-moving block onto a stable platform in a Mario game.

To move assets into the US dollar

Setting up a US bank account can be a monster affair for non-US citizens, and impossible for some. For customers in some countries such as the UK, the process has become a little easier with companies such as Wise offering USD balances and US bank details. However, it’s still easier to simply own USDC or exchange assets into it than it is to deal with American banks and the traditional financial system.

Sometimes someone just gets a hankering for the dollar, and USDC allows easy conversion to that. Maybe they might appreciate that there’s less inflation in the US than their local currency and so see USDC as a hedge against inflation! Maybe their local currency isn’t that stable or reliable.

To send funds

Everyone accepts dollars. USDC is a great way for companies to settle international financial transactions without the hassle of engaging with SWIFT or equivalent. It means invoices can be issued in US dollars and paid in them.

USDC is one of the most sought-after coins to borrow in decentralised finance, too, because borrowers can use it for all of the other reasons listed here!

Fundraising/Borrowing

These days if you need to fund a global project you’re cutting off your nose if you don’t do it in a currency that people worldwide can understand. Startup companies and non-profit organisations find it much easier to raise funds in dollars, and even easier to raise them on the blockchain in USDC. Raising funds in crypto means you can never rely on the value of the funds, but USDC gives certainty.

Stable price pegging

If traditional finance moves lock, stock and barrel to the blockchain, it will be bringing its US dollar values with it. Equity ownership, fund investments, liabilities and debt would also need to be denominated in US dollars. There may come a time when there’s another default currency for this, but that day isn’t today.

Cross-blockchain asset transfer

USDC started on the Ethereum blockchain but is now compatible with four more: Solana, Algorand, Stellar and Tron, all blockchains designed to compete with Ethereum.

Passive Income

While USDC’s value is going nowhere (by design), there are yield-bearing crypto accounts that give substantial interest on USDC. AQRU offers two options for USDC investment and numerous ways of buying it.

Recent developments and the future

DeFi (decentralised finance) is going through a rough patch at the moment, but none of that has damaged USD Coin. What it has done is draw attention to the poor design or dodgy asset backing (or both) of various other stablecoins competing for investor money.

What’s crystal clear is that regulation is beginning to catch up with cryptocurrency, and unregulated coins will either be relegated to a much smaller market or be pushed out. That’s if they don’t collapse first, like the algorithmic stablecoin pair UST/LUNA, or get knocked off their $1 value due to market conditions.

Many of these coins seem to have been designed as thought experiments with little attention paid to regulations, securities law or investors. USDC is different and will remain so.

An ecosystem where you have over 15,000 coins and over 500 exchanges is unsustainable. When consolidation happens it’s going to be wide-reaching and change crypto and DeFi forever. You’re seeing the first signs of it now as assumptions DeFi funds made about the future are proving wildly wide of the mark.

So, stay safe with USDC!

The post How is USDC Governed? appeared first on AQRU.

In decentralised finance, putting up more money than you borrow is an inefficient use of company money. But it’s the standard way DeFi works. Why? Because DeFi doesn’t have “underwriting”, which is a negotiation process between a borrower and a lender to negotiate a loan. This takes into account the financial circumstances of the borrower and their likelihood of paying the money back.

Maple Finance decided that to move corporate lending to the blockchain, throwing the baby out with the bathwater was a bad idea: not all companies are created equal. So they created a system of lending run by experts but using pools of money from regular investors.

One of those pools is their USDC pool: a pool into which regular investors can put their premium US Dollar stablecoins for 90 days at a time and earn interest. You can invest easily in Maple USDC with AQRU.

MPL Token

But there’s another aspect: the Maple token (MPL). This token (which can also be bought and sold at exchanges, and so has a financial life of its own) keeps the system running. People who stake their MPL to Maple’s liquidity pool earn a yield on that, and that pool exists to protect the main pools from bad loans (if someone defaults on their loan, that amount is recovered by selling MPL tokens).

MPL tokens also provide “governance rights”, so holders can help run the blockchain.

As of writing, the MPL token is worth $14.60.

Coinbase Listing

On January 25th 2022, major exchange Coinbase announced it was listing Maple: the price was around $14 on that day. After a few days, while investors transferred their tokens into the exchange, the price began to rise, and on the 9th of February 2022, when trading started, it continued to rise until April. The extra volume caused by the token being available on an exchange heavily aimed at retail consumers saw MPL peak at around $64 in the second week of April 2022.

Expert predictions of the Maple price on that same day were bullish, if conservative. “Wallet Investor” provided a one-year forecast of $22.59, and a five-year of $69.09 (the coin almost hit its five-year target in three months). Digitalcoin’s forecasts were all below its April peak.

So, Maple outperformed the predictions thanks to Coinbase, at least until it got hit by the crash at the beginning of May 2022 (to $22) and further suffered in June 2022 (to $14). This illustrates that while predictions of high prices are flattering, even the “experts” are just guessing and none of their models takes into account ecosystem failures that affect the whole market or even ecosystem failures that might weaken the business model of a coin (such as the DeFi market becoming more challenging).

So, are there any current predictions for Maple?

Well, yes. There always are. Here’s one set from Price Prediction – make sure you have extra salt ready, you’ll need lots of pinches of it.

If nothing else, this indicates that crypto should be seen as a long-term investment in coins you have faith in. If Maple gets through the current problems in DeFi and more traditional finance moves to the blockchain thanks to the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, MPL may have a bright future.

Don’t forget that AQRU’s Maple USDC and Maple ETH yield accounts are offering some of the best returns in crypto right now and you can invest in them through the AQRU app: just visit the website or download the app from the App Store or Google Play. There’s a 90-day lock-in for funds invested in Maple pools.

The post Maple Crypto Price Predictions appeared first on AQRU.

Timing the market is a well-known strategy that’s established itself as this elusive unicorn that we all know exists, we’re just never the ones to see it…

What is timing the market

One textbook definition of timing the market we took from Investopedia is the following: 

Market timing is the act of moving investment money in or out of a financial market – or switching funds between asset classes – based on predictive methods. If investors can predict when the market will go up and down, they can make trades to turn that market move into a profit.

In theory, timing the market seems like the perfect strategy – you buy when the market is at its lowest and you sell at its highest, making a hefty profit in the process. Then how come it’s so hard to implement? Well, looking at the definition again we can see it more clearly – based on predictive methods… No one knows for sure when the market will turn, so investors use different statistical models to predict how the markets will react, based on historical data or the way the markets have reacted to similar situations in the past. 

If your statistical model works and you manage to predict the movements correctly, timing the market can be a very lucrative strategy, and that’s even more true in the crypto universe. We’ve seen coins skyrocket like no other financial asset with 100x and even 1000x payoffs. Making a single investment at precisely the right moment in time, and then selling it again at also the exact right moment, is hard to beat by any other strategy out there. With the high perks, however, come the high risks. So here are some of the main pitfalls that you need to consider and prepare for.

Why timing the market is difficult

#1 It’s counter-intuitive 

Emotional investing is a real thing and it’s one of the most common pitfalls, especially if you’re not a professional investor. Timing the market requires A LOT of self-discipline as you need to move exactly when everything tells you not to, rather than when your heart tells you to. 

#2 You need a system, and you can’t deviate from it

In an effort to overcome your emotions you need to create a system that you can base your decisions on – and then you need to follow it rigorously. This system needs to be proven, one that you trust and that feels right for your investment profile, but also easy to manage. And here is when it gets tricky – there are so many approaches to building a system many investors lose focus in an attempt to incorporate everything – including gut instinct. 

#3 Higher transaction costs

Every trade you make in order to enter or exit the market comes with a transaction cost. And trying to capitalize on the market movements requires a lot of movement from you as well. So if you’re not careful the costs of all the transactions might end up eating a big chunk of your profit. 

#4 It comes with high opportunity costs 

Even more so than the transaction costs, you need to take into account the opportunity cost of not being in the market. By definition, the timing-the-market strategy means that you wouldn’t be invested when the market is falling. But the falling and rising of the market isn’t a straight line, it’s a series of jagged ups and downs. In fact, the biggest rally days usually come close after the biggest drops. The costs of missing those could be the difference between profit and loss.  

#5 It’s time consuming

If you want to be successful at market timing, you need to know the market in and out. You have to keep timely checks on the price movements of different cryptocurrencies, the trading volumes, the sentiment of market news… You get the point. This daily attention can become tedious and draining, slowly luring you back to pitfall #1 of making emotional decisions. 

#6 Crypto is young

We’ll be the first to admit, this is not a bad thing and not necessarily a pitfall, but just a simple fact you need to be aware of. It comes back to the statistical modeling and historical data we talked about earlier. Financial analysts are trying to predict markets with more than 100 years of data at their disposal (like the US stock market) and still success is elusive. Crypto on the other hand is barely 15 years old and in its short life has disrupted the financial scene like no other asset this century. It’s undoubtedly exciting, but also hugely challenging to predict.

When is the best time to buy crypto?

The best time to buy crypto is when its price is lowest. And if you’ve got this far into the blog, you’ll know by now that there is no way to tell when that moment has arrived. What we can do instead is show you a bit of a different approach that we’ve built to overcome all the pitfalls we discussed here – a trend following strategy.

Instead of trying to predict what the market will look like, we use technology to follow the trend it already has. Similar trend following systems have been proven in traditional finance, in some of the most successful hedge-funds, and can be very well implemented in the crypto world as well. 

AQRU Trend is an automated crypto trading strategy that uses a sophisticated algorithm to identify trends in the top ten cryptocurrencies* in order to decide whether to invest in them. When the market is bearish, a higher percentage of the portfolio is allocated to cash (USDC in this case) to protect your investment. And when the market is bullish, the portfolio is re-allocated into the cryptocurrencies that show a positive trend, so that you are able to benefit from potential gains as the market rises. 

The algorithm identifies a trend based on price points for one, two and three months back in time. What this means is that, in essence, most of the time you won’t catch the highest highs or lowest lows, but you will only enter the market when there is a sustainable positive direction and exit the market when a definite downward movement is happening. 

When creating AQRU Trend, we back-tested the strategy against the last two years of market data and it achieved a return of 723%, compared to the 120% return from a single-coin purchase of Bitcoin.**

The AQRU Trend portfolio is rebalanced weekly and the only fees you pay are 0.35% on your way in and 0.35% on your way out, saving you all the transaction costs you will incur, should you decide to build the portfolio yourself. 

Letting the algorithm do all the work also takes the emotions out of investing, not to mention all the time it saves to follow each coin movements and trend. 

To top it all off, while your funds are in USDC they pay you a 0% yield, ensuring that you earn a return even when the market is falling. 

This is what we call intelligent diversification!

* Excluding stablecoins, security tokens and tokens constituting specified investments

** Past performance is not indicative of future results

Capital Safe. You must be satisfied that this crypto offering is suitable for you in light of your financial circumstances and attitude towards risk. The price or value of cryptocurrencies can rapidly increase or decrease at any time. The risk of loss in holding cryptocurrencies can be substantial. Funds received by us in relation to cryptocurrency transactions are not safeguarded (under the UK Electronic Money Regulations 2011) or covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. References to AQRU herein mean to Accru Finance Ltd. Use of AQRU’s products and services is subject to our Terms of Use, which can be found at aqru.io.

The post If you try to time the crypto market you’ll fail – here are six reasons why appeared first on AQRU.

“USDC” stands for “US Dollar Coin”. It’s a “stablecoin” – a digital token that stands in for a real-world asset and tracks its real-world value.

Even in the days when crypto was far away from traditional finance, the sector needed something to represent the US dollar when crypto was being traded.

USDC is one of the biggest and most stable stablecoins. Before USDC, the biggest stablecoins were Tether (USDT) and DAI.

Both of these two are imperfect beasts, so in 2018, Circle, a fintech that counted Goldman Sachs amongst its investors, teamed up with the exchange Coinbase to create a new stablecoin: USDC. The idea was to create a shining example of stablecoin, backed by real currency.

What makes USDC superior?

“USDC is issued by regulated financial institutions, backed by fully reserved assets, redeemable on a 1:1 basis for US dollars and governed by Centre, the consortium that sets technical, policy and financial standards for USDC. USDC reserves are reviewed monthly and attested to by Grant Thornton LLP” Circle.

The ideal for a stablecoin is that it’s backed by assets. And not only “enough” assets, but “more than enough” assets to redeem every single coin if it were necessary.

And so, USDC has auditors checking it out. And not just once: every month! This was a big news item four years ago when the coin was first born.

Although these are commonly called “audits”, it’s actually the wrong term. Their auditors, Grant Thornton LLC provide “attestations”: which is basically a statement that they have no reason to disbelieve the information Circle provides.

An actual audit every month would be impossible, but firm Grant Thorton published one in June 2021.

Again, the contrast is with Tether. Another contrast is that USDC is managed by a proper financial management company, and Tether… isn’t.

Two other classes of stablecoins that contrast with the stability of USDC are DAI (the first stablecoin, backed by crypto loans), and other “algorithmic stablecoins” which use the coding equivalent of accounting tricks to persuade everyone they’re worth $1. They are… until they’re not.

USDC was born on Ethereum…

USDC also started life as a coin on the Ethereum blockchain (Tether started on a Bitcoin bolt-on layer, but soon sprouted an Ethereum version).

But these days, there’s more to blockchain than Bitcoin and Ethereum (ssshhh, don’t tell anyone!). Other blockchains need dollar equivalents too – they’re handy to have around.

So, USDC is now on the blockchains “Stellar”, “Algorand”, “Solana”, “Tron”, “Hedera”, “Avalanche” and “Flow”. Many of these blockchains are referred to as “ETH Killers”, though blockchains claiming to be the murderer of Ethereum tend to come and go with alarming regularity (NXT, EOS and NEO come to mind).

The Future of USDC

Until the US Government pulls its finger out and does a proper digital dollar (the banks are against this, just in case people realise they’re not really needed!), USDC will rule the roost (in prestige and trustworthiness, if not in market share).

One of the big things going for it is partnerships with payment providers such as Visa and Mastercard, which indicates that USDC is a major bridge between the regular financial system and the digital one in the future.

USDC also has a role in banking the unbanked: as a reserve currency, US Dollars are almost a worldwide currency. For countries with undeveloped banking systems or countries suffering disruption to their financial systems, USDC can be a lifeline for consumers and businesses, as it can go where regular dollars can’t. For instance, Ukrainians have found it very handy to have around during the Russian invasion.

One of the other USDC innovations is their API:

• “Each of Circle’s three powerful API suites (Payments, Payouts, and Accounts) shares a common set of core functionality that allows businesses to manage their own Circle Account in a programmatic way.
• With a Circle Account your business can deposit traditional money from 80+ countries and seamlessly convert them into “digital currency dollars”: USDC.
• You can then use USDC for everyday payments and treasury flows.

This core set of APIs allow you to:

• Transfer digital currency (USDC) in and out of your Circle Account.
• Register your own business bank accounts – if you have them.
• Make transfers from / to your business bank account while seamlessly converting those funds across digital currency and traditional fiat.”

This API almost guarantees much more take-up of USDC.

Of course, we would be amiss if we didn’t mention that you can buy USDC at AQRU and earn interest on it (up to 0% at the time of writing).

Once you’ve verified (make sure your selfie doesn’t look miserable!), you can USDC yourself further by transferring your existing coins in, or by transferring GBP or Euro to your AQRU account and buying USDC at the relevant foreign exchange rate (with no commission).

If that sounds like a faff, you can also buy USDC with a debit card from third-party in-app payment provider MoonPay.

Whichever way you do it, press “invest” and start earning.

The post What Is USDC Backed By? appeared first on AQRU.

So, at its heart, USDC is simply a digital dollar. Its website claims: “USDC is the world’s fastest-growing, fully regulated dollar digital stablecoin”. It was launched in 2018 by the “Centre Consortium” with the support of two key institutions: the Coinbase exchange, and Circle Internet Financial.

The US has been talking about its own digital dollar for some time but keeps arguing with itself about whether a proper digital dollar would accidentally make banks worthless (this is apparently considered “a bad thing”). USDC’s main competitor so far has been USDT (“Tether”), which has had a chequered history, to put it mildly.

Anyway, USDC is a “stablecoin”: USDC’s own definition is:

“A stablecoin is a blockchain-powered digital currency that combines the benefits of open, borderless cryptocurrency with the price stability of traditional fiat currencies.”

Now, in the crypto space, there are a lot of stablecoins, pegged to various real-world assets: the US dollar, the euro, the pound, gold, silver, and even a digital yuan (this is a “CBDC” – a Central Bank Digital Currency, which is officially backed by China). They come in all shapes and sizes, promising that your investment is safe, but stablecoin collapse has so far been the biggest crypto story of 2022, particularly algorithmic stablecoins (coins that work on logic, not financial backing, like UST) and under-collateralised stablecoins (that don’t have enough assets or have assets that aren’t good enough). A bad stablecoin can easily lose its peg to the dollar and collapse, or suffer the stablecoin equivalent of a bank run when everyone redeems their coins.

So, what makes USDC useful? What makes it different to other stablecoins? How does it improve on the dollar?

USDC brings a safe US dollar equivalent to quite a few of the more reputable blockchains.

USDC is available on many blockchains, not just the main DeFi staple of Ethereum, including Algorand, Solana, Tron and Stellar.

Having a digital dollar on a blockchain allows the world of “real” money to be painlessly represented and provides a benchmark for the value of other tokens.

It allows easy access/exit to companies who want to get involved in digital assets. It allows lending and borrowing in USD without leaving the cryptocurrency space.

It also allows payments and settlements to be made more flexibly and across borders.

Plus, it gives developers of all kinds the ability to build USDC into their financial offerings, vastly increasing the ecosystem’s size and value. They even have an API (“application programming interface”) to make integration easy. If Ethereum’s 2.0 upgrade succeeds, you’re going to see an explosion in new financial apps.

Why is USDC a good investment?

Well, at its heart, you’re investing in dollars, which of course is the world’s reserve currency. The feature that makes USDC better than the real dollar is that yields in the digital space can be better than traditional finance for investors who park (“stake)” their coins.

The idea behind USDC is that each one is backed by a real dollar or equivalent, and each coin is redeemable for a real dollar on demand. If this promise ever broke, the coin would collapse.

This is why Circle take their assets seriously, their website promises:

“USDC is fully backed by cash and short-dated U.S. government obligations so that it is always redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars. Each month, we publish attestation reports by Grant Thornton regarding the reserve balances backing USDC. Circle is a licensed money transmitter in 46 U.S. states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.”

Risks

One of the major risks that applies to crypto is that the coin is under-backed or structurally weak. USDC avoids this risk with transparency and substantial backing.

Some of the other risks that apply to USDC are pretty much the same as other parts of crypto: wallets or exchanges you might store it in can get hacked, for instance. Infrastructural problems or bugs might impact your ability to move or interact with your funds.

There’s also a risk that the interest rates currently enjoyed for USDC deposits might simply change as it becomes easier to borrow.

And of course, any company you entrust your digital dollars to has to be trustworthy and reliable: which means it’s on the plucky investor to check out that website (especially the small links) and check out those founders (what did they do before this?).

Of course, there’s also the possibility that the US dollar itself will collapse, but if that happens we’ve all got bigger problems than what to do with stablecoins, like how to stop the gloating of the Bitcoin HODLers who now have $1m-worth of Bitcoin.

Why choose AQRU to invest in USDC

AQRU combines a competitive interest rate on your USDC with two accounts, one with no lock-in, and one with a 90 day lock-in period. The security of your coins is assured thanks to bank-grade wallet security provided by our partner Fireblocks.

Then, once you’ve hardened your account with two-factor authentication so your child can’t borrow your password and buy more Bitcoin, you can fund your account by sending in GBP/EUR and buying USDC on the AQRU Exchange. You can buy USDC with a debit card too, though there are fees from “MoonPay”, our third-party provider. Or, you can send in USDC you already own.

Once you have pressed the “invest” button and specified how much USDC you want to invest, you can see the interest added per second in real-time (though it’s added per day). It’s like watching the moon landing, but with a lot more zeroes.

So, to summarise: if you want your savings to go to the moon slowly and carefully, then USDC is the vehicle that gives you the advantages of crypto, with none of the gut-wrenching daily changes in value that the observant bitcoin hodler has suffered through the years! So, what are you waiting for? Start investing in USDC with AQRU today!

The post Is USDC a good investment? appeared first on AQRU.

Investors fed up with the small returns generated by traditional finance often diversify into “alternative investments”: which is, any investment that isn’t covered by the “big 3” of cash, stocks/shares and bonds. These “asset classes” include art, real estate, investing in early-stage companies (“seed investment”), and of course cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Why you should look for alternative investments in 2022

Well, you should almost certainly choose investments that aren’t likely to throw all your money down a hole, which means doing checks on whoever you give your money to.

Aside from that, the best alternative investments are liquid. That is, there are plenty of buyers and sellers, and you’re not likely to be stuck with something you can’t sell. Plus, it’s easy to get a definitive value of how much something is worth.

The best investments also trend up in value over time: this is true, for instance, for art and real estate (both of which are illiquid investments and require an expert even to get a valuation, and valuations cost money). This can be vital if you need your investment money back (though you should never invest money you think you’ll need soon – investments should always be regarded as long term).

Risk vs Reward

Every single article about investing points out that the riskier something is, the more reward it offers (and the greater the losses you might suffer).

What risks should you be worried about? Unrealistic promises, scams, market shocks and technical glitches are the top 4.

This is where your research comes in (you did do some, didn’t you?).

Within each sector, there are also safer assets offering less risk, of course. For example, Amazon is safer than Acme, Apple is safer than Risk Corp.

Investing in Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is known for its volatility, and choosing the right assets to invest in is key. People can make 100% in a day if they invest in the right coin at the right time – but that’s just like picking the right roulette number, and the profit is unlikely to be driven by anything wholesome. Even the best crypto coins can have prolonged ups and downs like any market asset.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are both liquid and heavily used and are unlikely to “go to zero”, the traditional fear of crypto investors. Bitcoin trades up over the long term because of scarcity, and Ethereum trends up because more and more people will use it, especially after the forthcoming Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

Like a port in a storm, there are also “stablecoins”. These are coins that are “pegged” to the value of a real-world asset: such as US dollars, euros, gold or silver. That means they should only be as volatile as their real-world asset.

The devil’s in the detail though: what makes that coin worth anything? Well, the ideal stablecoin is backed 1:1 with real assets owned by the company that issued the coin. That way, the coin is actually redeemable for the thing you bought. Surprising numbers of stablecoins aren’t, and that’s where research comes in… or, you can stick with the classics…

Investing with AQRU

Bitcoin, Ethereum and the USDC stablecoin family are the three main planks of the least risky crypto strategy. Combine that with the ability to earn interest, and you’ve got the AQRU crypto interest-bearing account: sign up, verify, fund, invest, and watch your funds grow.

We take safety and security first but are still committed to generating returns greater than the traditional finance markets. The volatility of crypto means that interest rates may vary according to market conditions, but the overall return will be much better over even the medium-term. With AQRU most yield accounts don’t have a lock-in either, so you can withdraw your money as easily as you deposit it.

Crypto yield accounts are a way to take advantage of cryptocurrency returns and guarantee you end up with more of the asset than you started with.

Of course, Bitcoin and Ethereum will still change in value against the dollar (and of course, a US dollar stablecoin will change in value against the pound and euro), but this is a long-term investment in which you can also choose your exit point.

AQRU will even help you change your Bitcoin, Ethereum or US dollar stablecoins back to fiat currency with no commission and a fair exchange rate.

Some considerations…

When you invest in alternative investments, it’s probably best if you consider the money “out of reach”. So have a think about whether you could afford to lose it, or whether you’re likely to need it. Investment experts generally advise that everyone needs access to immediate cash reserves for emergencies (car, health, etc), and that expensive debts (e.g. credit cards) should be paid off before investing.

You also need to work out whether you’re investing for income, or for capital growth: AQRU is good for both, but you do lose out on the compound interest if you’re withdrawing the interest all the time.

If an investment opportunity allows you to start small and get out fast, then that’s probably an ideal profile for people who don’t have lump sums to invest: which is most ordinary people.

The post Alternative Income Investments for 2022 appeared first on AQRU.

“Diversify your portfolio!”, they say. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”. Good advice except if you’re in Sainsbury’s.

Whenever “investment” is mentioned, people generally mean traditional investments, such as stocks and shares, cash, and bonds. So you can buy shares in a public company, invest your cash in a savings account, or buy bonds.

Buying a bond is like lending money to an organisation for a (usually fixed) period of time and getting “yield”. Governments do this all the time to raise money, and the riskier the Government, the more interest you tend to get (because of the likelihood that the Government will default on its debt to you).

“Yield” is the annual net profit that an investor earns on an investment.

But yield in traditional markets can be disappointing, and sometimes you want part of your assets in an investment that moves in value differently from the main financial markets.

Prioritising your Portfolio

Most investment strategies involve splitting the amount invested in different ways depending on how much risk they’re willing to take. For instance, an ultra-conservative investor would invest 100% in cash. The return would be tiny, but the risk would be minimal. A more aggressive investor might allocate some of their investment to stocks and shares. A highly aggressive investor might invest more of their portfolio in dangerous but lucrative “options”, as well as stocks and shares.

In general, a balanced portfolio might contain 10% “riskier” investments for a higher return (with higher risk). “Options” and other clever financial tricks can be hugely lucrative, but they’re financial toys for the rich. They have high fees, high minimum investments and a lot of stress.

How else might you get a higher return on that part of your portfolio?

An Alternative

That’s where alternative investments come in. They’re “non-correlated” with the main markets – that is, they might sometimes move in the opposite direction (like Gold), or they might not move at all (like Fine Art). This makes them a “hedge” against the market.

There are lots of different alternative investment options, but this article is going to look at Cryptocurrency. Crypto now has investment products similar to traditional finance, but with higher returns that can outclass far more risky investments in the traditional marketplace.

Why Cryptocurrencies are a Good Alternative Investment

The usual barriers to entry for alternative investments are:

1. Liquidity – some alternative investments such as real estate or gold are more difficult to buy or sell. If you have a pile of physical gold in your house, it’s a real hassle to sell it again. If you invest in a property, the process of finding a buyer can be tortuous.
2. Barriers to entry – some alternative investments have a very high barrier to entry, usually in the form of minimum investments. Of course, if you’re buying a house or a piece of fine art, that might be hundreds of thousands of pounds. Often the barrier isn’t so big, but it’s sizeable.
3. High costs – alternative investments usually need managing in some way. For instance, properties need maintenance, art needs looking after, and even the process of valuing both is expensive.

Cryptocurrency (done right) has none of these problems: it’s easy to enter and leave the market, The major Cryptocurrencies are highly liquid and you can easily buy and sell them. Any Cryptocurrency in the top 20 would have a big enough market of traders to make this easy.

There is no barrier to entry: all you need is an app/website and a debit card (and photo ID, proof of address, etc).

And if you use the right exchange, or provider, such as AQRU (for investment), then fees are minimal, both for buying, transferring elsewhere (for instance, to wallets), or selling.

Mutual Funds

If you take any investment, traditional or alternative, there’s going to be someone offering a “mutual fund” in it. That is, a company does all the buying, selling, and managing, and sells you “units” of the underlying asset pool.

This improves liquidity a little, though your money might still be locked in for a substantial period of time.

A middleman is going to be charging you fees and making decisions on your behalf. There’s also the usual minimum investment.

You can, for example, buy into a Bitcoin fund (called an ETF). Oddly, these funds don’t buy any actual bitcoin: they’re essentially betting on it because Bitcoin itself is sold on unregulated exchanges. There are quite a few ETFs now: see here.

What to Consider when Investing in Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is volatile from day to day and like any alternative investment, you shouldn’t invest money you can’t afford to lose. Apart from the biggest Cryptos generally being the safest (with Bitcoin and Ethereum the top 2 mega-Cryptos), you also need to look at the companies you deal with. Are there good reviews? What’s the management team like? What safeguards are there to protect your funds?

How to Invest in Cryptocurrency – with AQRU

If you’re a moderately aggressive investor, you can invest like a moderately conservative one by investing in Bitcoin and/or Ethereum at AQRU for a 0% unconditional yield. AQRU uses prominent security company Fireblocks to keep your Crypto safe, and AQRU’s high return increases its value and allows you to benefit from any increases in value. You can buy Crypto from an exchange and send it in or buy it with your debit card through trusted third-party payment provider MoonPay. There are no other deposit fees.

No financial lock-in means you can get withdraw your Crypto immediately if you want to sell it during a particularly good day (though there is a $20 withdrawal fee for withdrawal to Crypto addresses). Though, Cryptocurrency should really be viewed as a long-term investment because the value tends up in 5-year timeframes but is highly volatile in-between.

The post Alternative Investments Opportunities: Cryptocurrency appeared first on AQRU.

However you got your first traditional savings account, it always seemed a bit magical. You put money in, you get a little more money out! Sometimes you had to suffer the curse of “giving notice” on the “high interest” accounts… oh, the three months wait for that withdrawal to buy that thing you had your eye on!!

These days, savings accounts have very much lost their appeal, and with interest rates being perpetually low for savers (even as banks prise open credit card borrowers for rates above 20%!), this doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon.

Part of the problem is that rates for savers are based on the base rate set by national central banks and aren’t reflected in the returns banks are making on the money. Banks love this, of course. They borrow money for super cheap and lend it back for much higher rates.

Another problem related to the low rates is that inflation eats away at the value of your money every day. Interest rates from traditional savings accounts can’t hope to keep up with that, especially when inflation steps up a gear. Even tax savings from putting your cash into a cash ISA (in the UK) can’t fight against you losing wealth every day.

About the only advantages of traditional savings accounts are that a portion of your deposits is generally protected by the Government against the bank collapsing, and the interest is legally guaranteed.

You’re not the only one looking for better returns on money than this! Here are some alternatives to savings accounts.

Stocks, Shares and Bonds

The most common investments people think about after savings accounts are stocks, shares and (occasionally) bonds. If you fancy owning stock in a company, and buying one or more of its many shares, then you can ride the rollercoaster of that company’s fortunes, hoping for an increased share price and regular shareholder payouts (“dividends”).

While this is a respectable way to try and increase your wealth, it’s still a risk, because the value of your investment (the “capital”) can go down as well as up: often quite quickly and for surprising reasons. Sometimes a company’s share price goes down simply because it didn’t make as much profit as expected. Capitalism, huh?

If roller-coasters aren’t your thing, then many companies offer the chance to invest in a basket of shares, usually chosen so that the risks balance out (though it does tend to balance out the reward as well).

In the UK it’s tax-efficient to invest your first £20,000 in a “stocks and shares” ISA because your growth and dividends are tax-free.

The name’s Bonds. Government Bonds.

If you fancy investing in countries rather than companies, you’re in luck. Governments operate their finances by issuing bonds with a guaranteed yield percentage attached.

This is regarded as safer than stocks/shares because governments not repaying you is rare. But it can happen in exceptional circumstances! When it does, you can be sure that the richer countries give that country a frowning of a lifetime.

In general, the riskier the bond, the more the return. For instance, this data shows the rates up to the end of 2021 – Mexico’s yield on a 10-year Government bond is currently 7.50%, but Sweden’s is 0.14, and Luxembourg’s was -0.14%. By now they will have changed, of course.

What all the above options have in common is that big financial companies will always be middlemen, and big financial companies historically take care of themselves far more intensively than they do their customers.

Deceptively high fees that eat into your returns are only part of the problem.

But I bought some Netflix on eToro!

Companies like eToro (and even Crypto exchanges such as Binance) sell “shares”, but it does these unofficially as “contracts for difference” – basically, getting another company to buy a share on your behalf and pretending it’s yours. The company knows nothing of your ownership, and you only get what shareholder rights the platform decides to give you.

While this allows you to buy fractions of a Netflix, it’s frowned upon in some jurisdictions and is flat-out illegal in others.

It’s basically a hack to tide people over until stocks and shares move to the Blockchain as tokenised securities or security tokens – an inevitable step because it saves the stock exchanges a lot of money and generates a ton more.

Peer to Peer (P2P) Lending

Most peer-to-peer lending in the traditional financial markets, where there are companies such as easyMoney (from the people who brought you really expensive luggage allowance charges), generate returns from one of the only areas of financial activity capable of doing so: property.

Why is it called “Peer to Peer”? Well, it’s basically you lending directly to other people you don’t know, through a platform that matches lenders to borrowers. A borrower might borrow £100,000 to buy a house but borrow it from 40 to 100 different lenders.

The rates of return are wildly variable even within the same platform and are dependent on the perceived risk and the nature of the loan. While they can be somewhat attractive, any loan you make may not be paid back.

Different platforms have different ways of dealing with this (usually their own guarantee schemes with small print). Because any loan is secured on property, there’s something to sell if the borrower defaults… but it’s a hassle and your capital is most definitely at risk.

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is a relatively new technology: a virtual currency that nevertheless has a real-world value and which can be bought and sold for “real” currency.

Developing financial markets generally give better returns and more risk. Cryptocurrency is definitely a developing market, Decentralised Finance offers Crypto versions of many of the same financial instruments as above, but usually with crucial differences.

Crypto P2P

For instance, Peer-to-Peer lending is a thing, but instead of property, a loan is secured on a deposit of Cryptocurrency (which is usually Stablecoins – tokens which reflect the value of an underlying asset – for instance, US Dollar Stablecoins). Everyone is more anonymous and it’s more difficult to assess risk, but if there’s a default at least the fall-out is handled by “Smart Contracts” (automated bits of code) rather than estate agents and bankers!

Crypto Stocks and Shares

There are many ”tokens” (coins, basically) on the Crypto market that are effectively shares in an enterprise. Regulators will catch up eventually and fine them (especially if they’ve been selling to US investors).

For stocks and shares on the Blockchain, however, great strides have been made with regulator-approved security tokens, such as those listed at INX Securities and TokenSoft: these even offer legally mandated dividends. It’s an even younger area than Crypto, so the technology and choice are limited, but if you’re an early adopter it’s well worth a look.

In both of the above, your capital is still at risk and you could end up losing your investment.

Interest-Bearing Crypto Savings Accounts

However, Crypto has another trick up its sleeve: interest-bearing Crypto savings accounts. These always offer a dramatically better return than traditional ones, because the return is generated from profits made on Crypto finance activities.

Oddly, the best returns in these accounts aren’t to be made on actual Crypto such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) – even though an account at AQRU.io can earn you 0% on these while you’re waiting for the dollar value to go to the moon.

The best returns come from Stablecoins such as digital dollars. These aren’t issued by the US Government but are tokens that track the dollar’s value and are backed by an equivalent amount of real assets in some way. You can get a 7% return on those at AQRU.io, which has an app and a website that are free to download and sign up for, and easy to use. We even give 10USDC investment to start, have a $75 referral fee, and are fee-free (except to withdraw to Crypto). The yield is paid daily, but you can see it being added every second in real-time – and it’s re-invested so it compounds. Don’t underestimate how much that helps!

Don’t expect miracles

We do have to remind you of a couple of things. First, it’s not advisable to invest money you can’t afford to lose or borrow money from credit cards to invest in Cryptocurrency.

Also, even with returns such as AQRU’s 7% on Stablecoins, the amounts only become meaningful if you’ve invested a substantial amount to earn it: whether as a lump sum, or regular saving. Usually, the returns also need some time to mature.

It’s a lot easier to get started with AQRU.io than other Crypto options: just download the app or register on the website to get started. Of course, AQRU takes its financial responsibilities seriously, so there will be verification. Get your selfie-face ready!

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