Author - Simon Chandler

Crypto savings accounts provide investors with the ability to earn interest from their cryptocurrency holdings. Working like a hybrid between a crypto wallet and a bank account, they reward users for deposits, either by staking or investing cryptocurrencies. They are therefore a good option for investors who plan to hold their tokens for longer periods of time. Investors can open crypto savings accounts with many of the leading exchanges, as well as with cryptocurrency lenders and investment firms. While the choice can often be intimidating, this article will help retail investors navigate the market and pick the best crypto savings account for them. Quick Comparison of Best Crypto Savings Accounts Here’s a quick rundown of the savings accounts we’ll feature - Best Crypto Savings Accounts Nexo is a Zug-based cryptocurrency lender and trading platform known for offering the best crypto savings accounts. It provides such accounts through its Earn product, which is available for just over 30 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, XRP, USDT, Dogecoin, Cardano, Solana, and Tron. By depositing the eligible tokens, Nexo users can earn a yield of up to 15% APY, although they can top this up by an extra 2% when choosing to receive their interest in the form of the native NEXO token. It pays such high rates via its overcollateralized lending to other institutions, with its credit lines collateralized by anything from 200% to 500%. One of the benefits of Nexo is that it provides daily interest payouts, while the Flex option enables users to withdraw deposited funds at any time. Choosing fixed-term deposits, where funds are locked up for at least one month, provides the chance to earn higher yields. Nexo has very low minimum deposit amounts, requiring only 0.001 BTC to earn yields with Bitcoin, for example. It also allows you to stake Ethereum and earn a higher yield by choosing to receive rewards in the form of Nexo Staked Ethereum (NETH), with maximum rates rising from 8% to 12% in the latter option. While certain cryptocurrency lenders (e.g., Celsius, Voyager) have collapsed in recent years, Nexo retains a strong reputation and is regulated in various countries worldwide, including as a Virtual Currency Operator in Italy. Regulated in the EU and Switzerland, YouHodler is arguably the best crypto savings account provider for European investors. It launched in 2018 and offers a highly competitive Yield Account that currently accepts 58 tokens, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Litecoin, Tron, Avalanche, and Tether. Its Yield Account is highly accessible, allowing users to open the account at the Basic level with a minimum deposit of only $100. Current rates for the Basic tier range from 3% for Bitcoin and Ethereum to 7% for Litecoin and 10% for Tether, while trading or depositing more can qualify users for fixed deposits and higher levels of interest. What’s particularly good about YouHodler is that it pays interest every week. There’s also a YouHodler Earn program, which works with a wider range of cryptocurrencies, including meme coins like Shiba Inu, Dogwifhat, Pepe, and Floki Inu. It can offer up to 15% interest on some coins, such as Pepe and Dogwifhat while providing the option of either daily or weekly payouts. All in all, YouHolder offers one of the best crypto savings accounts in the industry and is also an excellent trading platform. Given that it's regulated in Switzerland and the EU, users can take reassurance from the fact that it’s one of the most reliable platforms in the sector. LEDN offers several great options for investors looking for a crypto savings account. Its main product in this area is its Growth account, which offers very competitive rates on four eligible cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, and USDC. It offers 9.5% APY for accounts holding under 100,000 USDT and USDC coins and 10.5% APY if the accounts hold over 100,000 coins. For BTC, this rate is 1% APY for accounts with less than 2 BTC and 2.5% APY for accounts with more than 2 BTC, whereas Ethereum yields 3% APY for accounts holding less than 50 ETH and 4% for accounts holding more than this amount. Reassuringly, LEDN’s Growth accounts provide ring-fencing from all of LEDN’s other activities, with deposited assets exposed only to the counterparties that generate interest for funds. What’s also helpful is that LEDN provides full transparency of the investment activities it pursues to generate interest. LEDN customers can also opt to hold their cryptocurrencies in a Transaction account, which enables them to buy and sell crypto but is also quite secure as assets are kept in cold storage. Other products LEDN offers include the ability to borrow against your crypto, with the platform requiring a loan-to-value ratio of 50% and charging an interest rate starting at 12.4% APY. The biggest exchange in the US and one of the largest and most reputable in the world, Coinbase also offers a couple of services that enable investors to earn yields on their holdings. The first is its USDC Rewards feature, allowing USDC owners to earn interest on their holdings of the Coinbase-backed stablecoin. It's open to any Coinbase user who holds at least $1 in USDC, while there’s no maximum amount that would exclude customers. While rates are lower than you would find with other platforms and crypto savings accounts, Coinbase calculates rewards on a daily basis and pays them out within the first five business days of each month. The yield can rise as high as around 10%, although they vary from country to country and according to your account type. Coinbase also offers staking services for eight proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, Polkadot, Cosmos, and Tezos. Minimum deposit amounts are as low as $1 or nonexistent. Interest rates vary according to the cryptocurrency and the number of stakes, as do minimum staking periods and payout periods. As a highly regulated exchange, Coinbase is also one of the safest options for holding cryptocurrency. The Seychelles-based KuCoin is a leading crypto exchange that provides a varied suite of savings-related products as part of its Earn program. These are divided into Balanced and Advanced categories. The balanced one is intended more for the general retail investor, whereas the Advanced one is focused on more experienced and professional traders. Its range of "Balanced" Earn products includes savings accounts available for every cryptocurrency KuCoin lists. Users can choose to subscribe to a savings account for any token they hold, while they can also choose between flexible and fixed accounts. Rates of return are quite low if you choose the flexible option, with the current rates for Bitcoin and Ethereum, for instance, being 0.04% and 0.01%. These can rise with other cryptocurrencies, however, with USDT’s current flexible rate standing at 6.83%. KuCoin also occasionally offers savings promotions on a limited first-come, first-served basis that provide larger rates of return. This is in addition to its staking program, which is available for many—but not all – of the proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies it supports, including Ethereum, Cosmos, Tron, Polkadot, ApeCoin, and Injective. Its Advanced Earn products include Dual Investment, which offers non-guaranteed higher yields by settling in a token other than the one you initially purchased. This token is usually a stablecoin such as USDT, and the product pays a premium above what your initial investment is worth at the end of the period. Crypto.com is the top-20 cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and one of the most reputable names in the market. It operates its own crypto savings service for 18 cryptocurrencies. And if you live outside such jurisdictions as the US, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan, you can get the savings service for many other crypto coins. Its Crypto Earn product works by paying yields to users who deposit a given cryptocurrency and lock up Crypto.com’s native CRO token for a given period. Users who lock more CRO will receive better rates, with Crypto.com paying out up to 5% APY for Bitcoin deposits as part of its basic tier. Users can also opt to become Private Members by locking up a sufficient quantity of CRO, which will add 2% to their basic yield. As with many other crypto savings wallets and products, Crypto.com offers flexible and fixed services. Users can withdraw flexible savings at any time, but to earn higher rates of return, they must keep their funds deposited for either one or three months. Rewards accumulate every day and can be withdrawn every seven days. Their Flash Rewards program offers higher yields for a limited time. They also offer an Earn Plus product specifically for USDC, enabling users to earn interest on significantly larger deposits, up to an equivalent of $2 million. Cashaa was launched in 2016 as a neobank and has since expanded into cryptocurrency, offering a crypto wallet that provides yields on deposits. While its suite of products is fairly streamlined compared to some of the large exchanges and platforms out there, it provides some of the most generous rates of return. Its Earn product supports six cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Tether, USDC, and Cashaa’s own native token, CAS. Users receive a higher yield depending on their tier, which depends on how much CAS they have staked. The Base tier currently offers 6% APY on Bitcoin deposits, which can rise as high as 24% if a user belongs to the highest membership tier and chooses to receive their interest in the form of CAS. Cashaa also has flexible savings accounts, although users who want the highest possible yields will need to fix their deposits. For example, its maximum yield for stablecoins—Tether and USDC—is 34% APY, which would probably beat the rate of return of the vast majority of cryptocurrency traders and saving accounts. It compounds interest daily and requires a minimum deposit equivalent to $50. Cashaa also enables users to buy, sell, and transfer crypto while providing business accounts to companies so they can pay employees and take out secured loans against the value of their assets. It is available in over 200 jurisdictions, and the firm currently boasts over 25,000 users worldwide. Based in London, CEX.IO is a highly reputable exchange that also offers crypto savings accounts. It currently offers flexible savings accounts supporting 16 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Shiba Inu, Tether, and USDC. CEX also plans to introduce fixed accounts for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether in the near future. Holding stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, and TrueUSD can presently offer you an APY of 4%, while Ethereum, Dogecoin, and Bitcoin receive 3%, 2.3%, and 0.5%, respectively. The returns compound daily, and since the accounts are flexible, you can withdraw funds at any time. There’s no minimum or maximum amount for savings accounts, allowing users to start simply by transferring funds within the CEX app. CEX is a solid and dependable crypto-exchange, having gained registration in Lithuania and the EU as a Virtual Asset Service Provider and with FinCEN in the US as a Money Service Business. As such, users can rest assured that their funds are safer here than they would be in many other exchanges. That said, its savings accounts aren’t available in several notable countries, including the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada. It also allows users to stake coins, enabling them to earn higher yields on depositing their proof-of-stake tokens, such as Solana, Polygon, Tezos, Tron, Cardano, Polkadot, and Avalanche. How Do Crypto Savings Accounts Work? Crypto savings accounts provide users interest rates on the tokens they've deposited in their account, much like a regular savings account. Users can either choose flexible or fixed accounts based on their needs. Fixed accounts obviously give you more returns but require you to lock the funds for a certain period. Rewards are often compounded daily or weekly, while users can continue to invest in crypto coins with other funds while their tokens are held as savings. At the exchange’s or platform’s end, cryptocurrency companies can afford to pay interest to savings account owners because they may use deposited funds to make investments. While cryptocurrency is, by nature, a volatile financial instrument, providers of savings accounts often reduce their levels of risk by over-collateralization, hedging, and other counter-risk measures. Things to Consider When Selecting a Crypto Savings Account Here are the main things to look for when shopping for a crypto savings account: Rates of return: The whole idea of having a crypto savings account is to earn a yield on your tokens, so picking an account with the highest rates of return is the way to go, all other things being equal. Regulated platforms with strong reputations: The cryptocurrency market has witnessed the downfalls of lenders such as Celsius and Voyager Digital in recent years. As such, you should consider picking providers with the most experience and highest levels of customer satisfaction. Cryptocurrency Support: It’s important that crypto savings accounts support the cryptocurrencies investors wish to save. Platforms that offer more options and features can, therefore, make more sense if you hold different tokens. Ease of use: For the average retail investor, it really helps if an account provider makes their website or app as easy to use as possible. Crypto Savings Accounts Vs. Crypto Wallets There isn’t a fixed dividing line between crypto savings accounts and crypto wallets, with the two often overlapping to various extents. That’s because savings accounts usually function as wallets, while a small number of crypto wallets provide savings. Having said that, investors should be aware that if they hold their crypto in a savings account with a fixed term, they will not be able to withdraw and transfer their funds until the fixed term has matured. FAQs