As of Monday, February 14, BlockFi is changing its rules. Stop using them.
I’ve previously suggested them as a way to passively earn higher interest on savings. If you have money in there now, you can still do that. But now you can’t add any more, thanks to the SEC.
Let me just share the screenshot they sent me.

In case you can’t see the above, here’s the gist:
You can no longer open a hight-interest account or add any more funds to it.
They’re creating an alternative where you can farm yield again, and calling it BlockFi Yield. It will launch at some unknown time in the future.

So basically, it will happen at the lightning speed of SEC approval. Maybe even before we’re dead.
This is sad to me. The government has decided to step in and make something a problem that wasn’t a problem. There might be risks going on behind the scenes with BlockFi, but that’s on us, the consumers, to be wary of. We don’t want to be protected from ourselves. A regulator’s job is to enforcing honesty, not making it harder to actually use the assets we want. How many of us actually believe that’s who the SEC is really trying to protect, anyway?
If you’re outside the US, this doesn’t apply to you. Yet.
For all of us, we need to keep an eye for better ways to steward our Bitcoin. This is a great reminder to always have a backup plan.