Voyager Review 2024: A New Way to Generate Crypto Interest

Crypto Loans and Interest Accounts

While Voyager provides a few different crypto financial services to their users, these users are currently not able to take out loans against their crypto holdings. This is a service that is in pretty high demand and is available on other similar platforms, so it would not be surprising to see this sort of functionality eventually find its way into the Voyager app.

Although Voyager users are unable to collateralize their bitcoin and other crypto assets for the purpose of taking out a loan, there are interest-bearing accounts available on this platform. Perhaps most notably, there are no lockups or limits associated with these interest accounts, which means users will not feel trapped in a Voyager interest account in a situation where they need to move funds around or trade into a different crypto asset.

As of May 2021, there are 24 different digital assets in the Voyager app that can be deposit into interest accounts. However, the rate of interest paid out to users varies wildly depending on the specific cryptocurrency that is being deposited. For example, USDC stablecoin users are able to earn up to 10% APR on their holdings, while holders of more niche tokens like OMG and BAT are only able to earn 1% APR.

It should be noted that there are also some restrictions and finer details that come with the Voyager Interest Program. For one, users must maintain a minimum balance of crypto in order to earn interest on their holdings. This minimum balance varies between different digital assets. The interest payouts are calculated at the end of the month, and they are paid out based on a user’s average holdings each crypto over that month-long timeframe.

Interest can only be paid out in the underlying crypto token that has been deposited by the user, and the rates can change rather frequently, so users should checkout the Voyager website on a monthly basis to see what changes are happening with the annual interest rates that are available for each crypto.

Is Voyager Safe?

In terms of platforms where you’re giving custody of your crypto holdings over to a centralized third party, Voyager is a pretty safe option. The company is registered in the United States and follows the various regulations regarding the operation of this sort of financial institution in the country. In fact, Voyager is currently trying to get one of the coveted Bitlicenses in the state of New York, which is pretty much the highest bar that can be reached in the entire world when it comes to regulatory compliance in the crypto industry. For now, the Voyager platform is not available to the residents of New York.

Other signs of the safety and security that is provided to Voyager users include the fact that U.S. dollars held in an account on the platform are FDIC-insured for up to $250,000, the company is publicly traded on the Canadian Stock Exchange, and the crypto bank has never been hacked.

With all that said, it needs to be acknowledged that Voyager is a completely custodial platform, which means that you do not have actual ownership over your crypto holdings. Crypto purists will argue that you should never hand your coins over to a third party, as it sort of negates the fundamental value proposition of this new financial technology.

VGX and the Voyager Loyalty Program

VGX is the native, proprietary token of the VGX app. It is used as a way to reward users of the app and is intended to create incentives to further adoption of the Voyager platform. Specific use cases of the VGX token include earning a relatively high interest rate on VGX in the Voyager app, gaining access to higher interest rates for other crypto tokens, earning cashback rewards, and other uses in the Voyager Loyalty Program.

The Voyager Loyalty Program is a system of incentives for Voyager users to buy and use the VGX token. There are three tiers in the program depending on how much VGX the user is holding: Adventurer, Explorer, and Navigator. Adventurers must hold 500 VGX, Explorers must hold 5,000 VGX, and Navigators must hold 20,000 VGX. Voyager Loyalty Program users gain access to various perks such as boosts on interest earnings, cashback rewards on trades, higher friend referral rewards, and savings on withdrawal savings. In general, the more VGX a user is willing to hold, the greater the rewards they are able to get through the program.

The VGX token actually started out as a token called ETHOS, as it was originally the native token of Ethos wallet, which was acquired by Voyager. More recently, the VGX token was merged with the LGO token, which led to an effective increase in the supply of VGX. VGX operates as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network.

As always, it’s important to remember that the cryptocurrency space is highly volatile, especially when it comes to more niche token offerings like VGX. While there are some attractive use cases of VGX that may make it seem like an easy way to make a few quick extra bucks, you also have to remember that the VGX token itself fluctuates wildly in value. This means that any extra earnings made through VGX use cases could be more than wiped out through fluctuations in the underlying VGX price.

Voyager Extras

Outside of the ability to earn interest on crypto, there aren’t really many other features to look at with the Voyager app. Of course, there is the ability to buy and sell various cryptocurrencies via Voyager’s brokerage interface, but this aspect of the platform is rather limited, as users are not even able to trade directly between different crypto assets at this time.

Instead, the user must move back to U.S. dollars before they are able to switch into a different cryptocurrency. That said, the Voyager brokerage platform does double as a solid tool for overall crypto portfolio management, and the support of more than 50 different digital assets means users have access to the most popular crypto tokens on the market. Additionally, there is an option to dollar-cost-average (DCA) into a specific cryptocurrency of the user’s choice, which is often cited as a useful way to avoid the drastic and wild fluctuations that can happen in the crypto market over short periods of time.

It should be noted that there are also a variety of new features in development over at Voyager. Most notably, there is a crypto debit card in the works that will include rewards and incentives for members of the Voyager Loyalty Program. Additionally, a desktop version of the Voyager app is also in development.

History of Voyager

The Voyager app did not go live until 2019, but the origins of this company can be found in the 2017 bubble in initial coin offerings (ICOs) when Voyager acquired Ethos Wallet and rebranded that wallet’s underlying utility token to VGX. In terms of actual products and services, Voyager started as a trading providing for institutional investors.

This is when a large number of partnerships and integrations began to develop between Voyager and a number of other large exchanges and financial institutions in the cryptocurrency space. Today, these backend integrations are what power Voyager’s low fees on their brokerage interface.