Cobo Crypto wallet for investing and staking

Intro

I have been evaluating the Cobo.com wallet services for the past few of months. I have been testing the staking pool, and interest earning capabilities, as an alternative to Celsius (which I really like – I will also be writing some articles about Celsius finance). There are 3 types of Cobo wallets – Cloud/mobile, Hardware/vault, and custody solution for enterprises. For the purposes of this article, I will be discussing the mobile/cloud wallet and investment capabilities.

For people who are not familiar with staking tokens, there are a lot of articles on the subject. But in short, they allow you earn rewards by staking, or locking up your tokens for a period of time (like REX in the case of EOS). Some projects allow you to delegate to validators, who help to maintain the network integrity and security. In this way, you don't have to invest in your own equipment, or large staking requirements, since they are pooled (similar to mining pools in proof of work consensus type systems). 

In the case of lending investments, there are fixed and variable types which we will talk about below. 

Cobo Mobile/Cloud Wallet

This is a "custodial wallet", which means that THEY control the keys. –https://cobo.com/blog/cryptowalletexplained?locale=en

​So, there is a certain amount of custodial risk involved (similar to other centralised services like Celsius). Based on my research these are the factors that mitigate the risk, (but keep in mind that there is still a certain amount of trust involved):

– With the Proof of Stake (POS), and Flexiplan investments, you can withdraw your funds at any time (see features below). Only the fixed term investments require you to lock-in your funds for a fixed amount of time. So you can avoid the fixed type if you prefer (especially in the beginning, until you have more confidence)

– The Cobo community includes a good ecosystem (including Tron, F2pool, IOTX project, Dapp review etc.), and they have a good development team – including Discus Fish, and Dr. Changhao Jiang) https://cobo.com/about

– They are quite transparent and any shady practises would be voiced in the community forums (ex Telegram, Facebook etc.). Terms and conditions of each investment are shown, and you should read them, so there are no surprises.

– Security is very important to them, and they are audited by 3rd parties – audited by Cure53. They are also very knowledgeable about security, and this is incorporated into all their products

– They received $13 million in series A funding from DHVC, and other reputable investors, who must have done due diligence

– They have good and responsive support (chat and email support) that I have spoken to several times, and I am a beta tester, so I have been evaluating many of the features for several months. No major problems to speak of, from my experience

Investment services

– Proof of stake pools supports many different coins on many different chains, and they offer good rates of return – funds can be withdrawn at any time. This option does not lock you in. 

– Their “Bitgrow” service has Flexiplan (can withdraw at any time) and fixed term investments (locked in from 30 - 180 days for example). The advantage is that the rates are locked-in in also for the same time period. Flexiplan rates are progressive, and get higher the longer you leave the funds, but you can withdraw them at any time. Fixed plans have fixed APR rates, based on the coin and length of time. Some of the investment plans have to be claimed before they sell out. But there are always new ones coming out for particular coins which they feature

– You can earn CC tokens by doing missions (tasks on the site, like using different features). They can be redeemed for other coins or boosts (give you higher rates or limits). These redemption rewards sell out pretty fast, so its better to claim them quickly

– They support some airdrops and incentive programs from a few coin projects like Tron/BTT, and IOST for example

– They support 3rd party dapps

– You can Swap/Exchange one coin for another, which is fast, and the fees are relatively low (they still have to pay the network fees). This can be very useful. But there are some minimum quantities, which will restrict you sometimes. Most of the coins can be exchanged, but not all of them.

Conclusion

This is a different type of investment vehicle than  the Celsius financial platform, which I will discuss in another article. Each one has advantages and disadvantages, and I believe that its good to have both. My evaluation and testing of this service has been good, and it has a lot of going for it. There are a lot of features, and it takes a little while to start getting all the benefits. My only complaint is that it would be nice to have a desktop version, but the mobile version is quite use-able. They don’t seem to do much marketing, so most people have not heard anything about it yet, but I believe that this project will continue to grow, and could be huge in the future – A sleeping giant worth checking out, in my opinion.  Please keep in mind that I am not a financial adviser, and this is not investment advice. Let me know what you think.