BlockFiReviews of blockfi.com

The platform and the customer service are good but the interest rates they offer are really low for crypto other than stablecoins.

BlockFi is best if, for investment purposes, you intend to use their interest account, or for buying low and selling high your crypto. If you want to transfer your crypto to another wallet outside of BlockFi, beware. The reason why I want to transfer my crypto is because BlockFi had changed their interest account terms this month (February 2022), and is now no longer an ideal place for me to earn interest on my crypto. I've held about 5 figures amount of USDC for about a month already. I get my paycheck monthly, so I transfer part of my paycheck for USDC on BlockFi at the beginning of February. I was ok on, and planned for the 5-business day ACH hold already. Around February 7, I started attempting to transfer, almost daily, my USDC to another wallet under my control, and every time I try, my transfer is cancelled the next day. Every time I start a transfer, I've had to do identity verification, which is apparently useless, as my transfer will end up cancelled the next day anyways. I've been attempting for a week now, and the crypto has to sit in their new "wallet" account feature while "attempting" to get transferred, so for the whole week, I am not earning interest on my crypto while the crypto is waiting to get cancelled the next day. Here's the interesting part: customer service. I called them a number of times last week, and every time, their only solutions are either to ACH transfer the funds back to my bank and use a different company to transfer my crypto, or to try to transfer the crypto again, call back if it gets cancelled again so that they can escalate my case. None of the agents can give me a definitive amount that I can safely transfer, nor give me a solution where I can verify myself further to help me transfer my crypto. So I keep trying to transfer my crypto, and it keeps getting cancelled, and my case never gets escalated. The last customer service agent I spoke to today was particularly upsetting. He told me there is no escalation, there is no one else to talk to, and there is nothing I can do except for an ACH transfer back to my bank or keep trying and wait. He makes no attempts to help me in any way, it is just "it is what it is", and no helping me, the customer, at all. No concessions for my trouble. So I am stuck trying once more to transfer, then I will be forced to ACH transfer to my bank, which will take a couple of days. Offering to waive my fee to wire back to my bank would be nice, for my trouble, but otherwise pay the fee or wait.

Overall the onboarding process was pretty simple. They use Plaid for banking verification, which can be problematic (although has improved over time). Yields are good on stablecoins. IR is fairly responsive, albeit utterly unable to think creatively. But, I ended up pulling my funds from BF for the following reasons: 1) OUTBOUND wallet-to-wallet transfers take up to 5 days. BF claims the delay is for security purposes. This 'friction' not only is terribly frustrating but more so just goes against the whole spirit of crypto. This became the proverbial 'final straw' for me. 2) unnecessary and long holds are placed on, both, wallet transfers of stablecoin INTO BF and for ACH transfers of USD. Again, anomlyous to the spirit of crypto. 3) only a handful of coins offered. Net net..BlockFi operates more like a bank (without any FDIC protection) rather than a crypto company. And, we shall see how long they can support the yield.

I've used BlockFi for nearly a month now, and I've had two attempts of withdrawal, the first one was free and relatively smooth, the fund hits my wallet within 48 hours. However the second attempt was a disaster, I submitted the withdrawal request on 25th July, received the identify verification email and done it, two days later, the request was still in pending status, then I raised a ticket through their AI customer service bot and received one email from their CS team on 29th saying I was randomly picked for additional verification for my withdrawal, so I have to do the verification once more which I completed as well. It's 30th today and my request is still in pending status and I have no idea when this will be sorted. By the way, the second withdrawal is not free, BlockFi charged 10usd for this which is unacceptable IMO based on my experience.

Interest rates is reduced every month

I'm disappointed a substantial portion of my assets were sold due to a margin call. It only reached that LTV for a brief moment, and the ETH wasn't sold until much later in the day. In fact, I emailed you long after the drop in eth price, and the assets weren't sold yet, but right after my email they were sold. I can't help but feel like my email affected the decision. If the assets were sold when eth was at its lowest, I should have received notification sooner (immediately). If it was sold after that, it shouldn't have been sold because it below 80% LTV. I added some collateral to see if it would work and it didn't. It sent the eth to an interest account. I understand you need to protect your investors, but you could have done a better job protecting my assets too. Could have called, or something. I also don't like how the original agreement is 35% LTV, but then you sold enough to bring it to 50%. That devestated my porfolio and ruins the reason why I took the loan in the first place.

Way to slow for a digital platform.

I was happy with blockfi until they lowered interest for the second month in a row. Ridiculous. And to get my money out they have one free withdrawal and then a .00075 btc fee which equates to 50$ - just to withdrawal my money. Blockfi has too high fees, ridiculous.