Have you staked cryptos to earn passive income? What "banks" do you use?
I have crypto assets staked with Celsius, BlockFi and Blockchain.com. Recently I had to pull the funds out from them. Here are my findings.
Celsius is the fastest. No questions asked. No human intervention.
BlockFi requires you to go through a verification process which involves uploading photo of ID and yourself, which is great. It protects you and your funds. Then there's a manual verification step which takes some time to complete. But overall, as long as your request is submitted and verification passes, you can expect your funds to be in your account within a week.
Now comes the pain in the butt: blockchain.com.
When I deposited my cryptos into blockchain.com account. Nothing is required. It's like DEX where you do your stuff and no one's gonna step in...until withdrawal.
I initiated the withdrawal on May 18th.
For 2 days, nothing happened on their side. No email. No one reached out to me. No one worked on it. It feels like my request went to the dark void where no one sees it. So I created a support ticket asking what was going on.
Again no one replied and another 3 days passed. Finally on May 24th, someone reached out, saying they'll need to verify the recipient's address is correct. They'll do so by sending a small amount. If I can tell them the right number, they know it's the right address.
That's good. At least I know my coins will be in my wallet soon. Just when I thought it was the end of it, I received this...
What? Wasn't the withdrawal process started already? If KYC is important, it should have been done long before the withdrawal. I'd expect it to happen when the fund is deposited.
I was so pissed but there's nothing I could do but to provide them with requested documents.
Again, just when I thought I had provided everything and my funds should be released, I received another bomb...
I wrote back explaining that I didn't buy crypto in the last 6 months with fiat and that I traded only on DEXes so there is no statement.
Next morning I found my fund was released. To my surprise, I received another email from Jordan...
To me, this means that their internal process is a mess. Functional units are disconnected. If KYC is really important to them, they should have done it upfront when the funds are deposited, not during withdrawal.
They're also very slow to react to withdrawal and support requests. When I requested the withdrawal, Eth was above $3,500, and by May 24th, it was as low as $1,700. This was a $1,800 / Eth profit I could have made.
I now see blockchain.com as a massively risky place to stake your crypto because you're not only exposed to usual custodial risks but also censorship risks which might cause you to lose all your funds altogether if uncle same isn't happy with any aspects of your funds.
I personally would never use blockchain.com and any of their services again and I strongly encourage you to think twice before you do.