Introducing Earn: simplifying crypto yield for investors

We’re always looking for new ways to make crypto simpler for investors, and to match or exceed the advantages of traditional investment options. That’s why, alongside our rebrand to Aplo, we’re excited to introduce Earn, a great new feature for the platform that makes the yield process easier and allows investors to get a competitive rate of return on their crypto assets at the click of a button.

What is Earn?

As the name suggests, the Earn feature allows Aplo users to generate interest on crypto they own on the platform through automated lending transactions. Earn uses a combination of internal lending and fully vetted external lending, through institutional desks and the permissioned DeFi liquidity market, Aave Arc. Earn minimises risk by negating the need for coins to move between exchange/OTC trading accounts, lending desks and permissioned DeFi.

It also keeps investors in control. You can move assets seamlessly between yield and trading accounts at any time, and there are no limits on withdrawals, making it a simple way to earn money on assets without investing time and energy in micro-managing loans. We’re extending this simplicity by also making it possible for customers to enter the platform with fiat, have it converted into digital assets and earned on by the broker, and then converted back into fiat without any hassle.

The returns are respectable, too. Because Aplo is able to split assets between internal demand from trading firms, and multiple lending desks, customers can take advantage of competitive rates on large allocations.

Reaching maturity

We’ve created Earn because expectations of crypto platforms are changing, as the market grows mainstream and matures. People increasingly ask for the services and benefits they’re used to from traditional banking platforms. And digital asset purchasers are no longer looking to simply buy, hold, and sell crypto assets, they’re also looking for new ways to use their existing crypto holdings to generate returns.

With the current inflationary environment, institutional investors are under pressure to hedge against inflation. Regulated exposure to a whole new asset class – cryptocurrencies – is too attractive an offer for them to turn down. We're not just offering crypto anymore, we're also offering a yield generating product with competitive rates of return.

This all helps explain our rebrand from Sheeldmarket to Aplo. When we launched, our product was all about protecting investors’ information, and the name reflected that. Nowadays, it’s a very different proposition. We are an EU-based DASP under regulatory oversight and the only licensed crypto broker for traditional financial institutions in the EU. This makes us the perfect commercial partner for banks, fintechs, hedge funds, pension funds and other traditional financial institutions looking for a legitimate way to access the generational returns that cryptocurrencies offer.

We do that in a way that brings simplicity to an arena that has historically been hyper-complex. And we wanted to write that underlying value proposition into our name: ‘Aplo’ means ‘simple’ in Greek. In creating a gateway for traditional finance to access digital asset trading in a very simple way, we provide a bridge from the old world to the new. And so Aplo represents both our present as well as our promise for the future.