A lot has happened, so it’s about time we had a look at how my investments performed in August 2021.
This update is coming to you from Split in Croatia, where I’ve been having a great time with my wife for the past two weeks. I really love coming here once a year, Croatia has become one of my favorite countries to visit.
Getting back to topic, I’ll once again cover my entire portfolio: P2P lending, stocks in the form of ETFs and crypto. For the first time, I’ll also show you how I generated a bit of extra income last month from some USD I hold for extra currency diversification.
We’ll have a look at how everything performed in August, if I made any changes and discuss noteworthy events all the way up to September 15th.
Please don’t forget that none of this is investment advice, just my personal opinion based on my own experience as an investor.
Alright, let’s start with my largest chunk of investments. I’m of course talking about stocks, which I like to cover via passive ETFs.
ETFs
In case you’re new, I simply buy a single low-cost exchange traded fund, the accumulating Vanguard FTSE All-World (ISIN: IE00BK5BQT80, Ticker: VWCE) at the beginning of each month.
That’s it, that one ETF enables me to be invested in over 3.600 companies from all over the world.
Let’s have a look at how it performed:
- +2,97% in August
- +20,05% since the beginning of 2021
That’s an exceptional run so far this year. While I’m obviously very happy about the performance, ETFs are long-term investments. There will be plenty of less pleasant bumps along the road!
By the way, last month I mentioned a 50€ promotion that Degiro was running for new users.
Good news, they prolonged it until the end of September! So if you’re still looking for an excellent, low-cost broker to buy ETFs, you can still participate in the 50€ promotion if you sign up via my link and activate your account until September 30th, 2021.
If you do that, Degiro will refund up to 50€ of your transaction fees until November 1st, 2021.
If you’re based in Austria or Germany, where ETF taxation is a bit more complicated, make sure you check out all of my favorite low-cost brokerage accounts here:
P2P Lending
Let’s move on to my investments in P2P lending.
Here is my platform allocation on the 1st of September:
Here I’d like to reduce Crowdestor and to move some of that money over to other platforms.
Ok, let’s see how each platform did individually.
Mintos
- Income (August 2021): 54,49€
- IRR: 11,91%
- Invested since: 27.09.2018
Now that Mintos received its license as a European investment firm and electronic money institution, I’m looking forward to their release of the first Notes this month.
Notes are their way of offering p2p loans in the form of regulated financial instruments. Each set of notes will contain 6-20 individual loans and will have its own identification number and prospectus.
The minimum investment for notes will be 50€ each, up from the 10€ minimum we’ve had so far when buying loans on Mintos.
However, since the notes already contain 6-20 individual loans, we’ll actually be able to diversify our investment more easily.
Crowdestor
- Income (August 2021): 15,41€
- IRR: 8,83%
- Invested since: 03.04.2019
26 out of 39 loans on Crowdestor are still late and loan recoveries are progressing very slowly. I withdrew 139€ from a repaid loan last month.
Lendermarket
- Income (August 2021): 33,13€
- IRR: 14,45%
- Invested since: 21.11.2019
Creditstar, the group of lending companies offering all the loans on Lendermarket, received their consumer credit provider license in Denmark and launched their lending product Monefit in the Czech Republic in August, so we’ll likely see more loans from these two countries on the platform soon.
Sadly they weren’t able to finish their audited financial report for 2020 yet, but that should be coming in the near future as well.
- Get 1% cashback on your investments on Lendermarket after 60 days by signing up via my link.
Viainvest
- Income (August 2021): 24,89€
- IRR: 12,13%
- Invested since: 11.10.2019
The interest rate for all consumer loans on Viainvest was changed to 11% in September.
I didn’t find that too surprising, as interest rates across P2P lending have dropped a bit universally over the past few months. I’ll still happily take 11% on the platform.
Also, Viainvest is in the process of becoming an investment brokerage firm. In light of that, they are trying to remove inactive accounts. Anyone with an account balance below 10€ and no transactions in 3 months will be charged 2€ per month until the account reaches 0 and can be closed.
Don’t worry, if you’re an investor like me, nothing changes for you.
The only way this impacts you is if you have 9€ or less sitting on your Viainvest account and you’re not actually invested into any loans.
- Get a 10€ signup bonus on Viainvest via my link.
Iuvo Group
- Income (August 2021): 20,05€
- IRR: 12,82%
- Invested since: 05.10.2018
Iuvo Group’s asset recovery from the Polish loan originator CBC seems to be progressing as planned according to its latest blogpost on the subject, so hopefully I’ll have some good news to share soon! I have 428€ worth of outstanding CBC loans in my account.
- Request a referral here to get 1,5% cashback on Iuvo Group
Robocash
- Income (August 2021): 26,89€
- IRR: 12,62%
- Invested since: 19.01.2021
Robocash has been growing a lot lately. Many investors are just now discovering this platform, which has been sort of an under-dog since its launch in February 2017.
The Robocash Group published its consolidated financial report for the first half of 2021, according to which it generated 15,4 million USD in net profit and over 137,1 million USD in revenue, which is a +43,9% and +144% increase respectively compared to last year.
These are very impressive numbers, I’m feeling very positive regarding the platform’s future.
- Use this link or the referral code advE to get 1% cashback on all your Robocash investments after 30 days.
Bondora Go & Grow
- Income (August 2021): 7,05€
- IRR (incl. withdrawals): 6,68%
- Invested since: 01.09.2018
EstateGuru
- Income (August 2021): 1,87€
- IRR: 7,67%
- Invested since: 12.10.2020
EvoEstate
- Income (August 2021): 0€
- Invested since: 03.02.2020
- IRR: 7,32%
I withdrew 406,50€ from EvoEstate, as there were no loans I wanted to buy in August. I had that money lying around after one of my real-estate loans was fully paid back in July.
- Get 0,5% cashback for 6 months on your EvoEstate investments via my link
My Income From P2P Lending in August
| Platform | Income | IRR | Invested | Value |
| Mintos | 54,49€ | 11,91% | 5.409€ | 7.785€ |
| Crowdestor | 15,41€ | 8,83% | 5.259€ | 6.331€ |
| Lendermarket | 33,13€ | 14,45% | 2.013€ | 2.719€ |
| Viainvest | 24,89€ | 12,13% | 2.177€ | 2.672€ |
| Iuvo Group | 20,05€ | 12,82% | 1.562€ | 2.639€ |
| Robocash | 26,89€ | 12,62% | 2.500€ | 2.677€ |
| Bondora Go&Grow | 7,05€ | 6,68% | 900€ | 1.275€ |
| EvoEstate | 0€ | 7,32% | 324€ | 400€ |
| EstateGuru | 1,87€ | 7,67% | 500€ | 534€ |
| Mintos I&A | 0,05€ | 10,00% | 0€ | 59€ |
| Total | 183,80€ | 20.644€ | 27.091€ |
I earned a total of 183,80€ in interest from P2P lending in August. My return on investment from P2P lending was 0,68% for the month.
Bitcoin & Ethereum
Alright, let’s get to the most speculative portion of my portfolio, cryptocurrencies. As a reminder, I try to keep these at around 10% of my total investments, as they carry a lot more risk.
Here’s how Bitcoin and Ethereum performed:
Bitcoin:
- +15% in August
- +70% since the start of the year
Ethereum:
- +39% in August
- +405% since the start of 2021
So far it looks like my assumption that this would be the best performing sector in 2021 was right, but we’ll have to see at the end of the year.
Please keep in mind that these are highly volatile, unpredictable investments, so never invest money you can’t afford to lose!
USD Lending
Speaking of crypto, I also generated a bit of extra income by lending out some USD.
At first I wasn’t sure if I should be talking about this, since I’m not an expert in this field. Yet ultimately, I decided to openly share this part with you as well.
Here’s the deal. I tend to keep some USD for a bit of extra currency diversification, with some of that money being profits I realized from rebalancing my crypto portfolio every once in a while.
I hold these US dollars in the form of USDC, which in my opinion is the most trustworthy stablecoin. It’s issued by Circle and pegged 1 to 1 to the US dollar.
By lending out my USDC, I was able to earn a total of 141,71 dollars or about 120€ in interest using two services last month.
The first one is Celsius Network, one of the largest crypto lending platforms in the world, with currently over $24,3 billion in assets under management.
They currently pay 8,8% interest per year on USD stablecoins.
The second service I used to earn interest on my dollars is the exchange FTX. FTX has become my second most used exchange in the crypto space after Binance.
There, I’m able to margin lend my USD and earn interest on them on an hourly basis. The interest rate fluctuates a lot based on market conditions, but what I like is that I never have to lock my money up for more than an hour, so I can access my funds easily.
Like FTX, Celsius Network also allows me to withdraw my money (or digital assets) whenever needed. This makes these great options to earn some interest on USD I would just have lying around unproductively. At least in my opinion.
If you’d like to check out Celsius Network and support me, here is my referral code:
If you use this code when signing up, you get a $50 bonus paid in Bitcoin after opening an account and lending out $400 or more worth of crypto or stablecoins on the platform for 30 days.
By the way, I thought I’d mention this. Personally, I always select to earn interest in-kind (BTC on BTC, ETH on ETH, USDC on USDC etc.) on Celsius. I’m not a fan of their CEL token. It has performed quite poorly this year and I don’t believe it has a good enough use case long-term.
Getting back to FTX, they’re the only exchange I know with even lower fees than Binance. I enjoy using them a lot. They also allow direct Euro deposits & withdrawals, which is always useful.
Just one thing, make sure you turn off spot margin trading in your account, just like I did here. FTX is used by a lot of professional traders, which is why the option is activated by default. I’m certainly not one of them, so I prefer to just turn that option off to avoid mistakes.
That being said, please still always do your own research too. I just want to be open with you and share what I’ve been doing with my own money lately.
Alright guys, that’s all for my investments in August! I know this was a long monthly update, so thank you for sticking with me till the end!
You might enjoy these posts:
- Distributing or Accumulating ETFs: What You Need To Know
- Why I Quit My Job at Google (As a Millionaire)
- The Best Brokers for European Investors in 2021 (ETFs & Stocks)
- Robocash Review: How Did I Miss This One?
- Finding The Best ETFs in 2021 (European Investor)
- Viainvest Review – 15 Months Later (2021)
- How To Buy ETFs – My Investment Strategy
- PeerBerry Review – Worth It In 2021? (My Personal Opinion)
My Investments in 2021 (August) – The Video
Subscribe
Valuable Resources
- My Investment Tools
A list containing all my investments in P2P Lending, the brokerage accounts I use to buy ETFs, my speculative investments in Bitcoin and my free bank accounts. It even includes the tools I use for blogging and YouTube. - P2P Bonus Offers
A collection of all the best, currently available bonus and cashback offers in the P2P lending space. Regularly updated.
Disclaimer: Investing involves risks of losses. You should always do your own research before investing into anything. Also, some of the links are affiliate links, which help support me, the website & YouTube channel. I only link to services I use myself, none of them are sponsored.
For USDC savings I recommend https://orion.money/ or https://app.anchorprotocol.com. Much better APRs and you’re dealing with decentralized smart contracts, not a centralized company who has custody of your funds.
Insurance is also available on the above protocols.
Hi Joseph, thanks for sharing your recommendations! I know Anchor, hadn’t heard of Orion yet – I’ll do some research. My issue with decentralized UST lending (eg. via Anchor) is that as far as I know, you’re able to get (paid) insurance against smart contract failure, but not against UST losing its peg to the value of the USD.
Some protocols have now started to offer insurance against de pegging. DYOR.
Also this is soon launching which will help with the de pegging: https://twitter.com/whitewhaleterra?s=21
Interesting, I’ll look into it. Thank you Joseph!
Hello Angelo,
I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while.
I notice that in your biggest P2P stake (Mintos) you have almost 30% in recovery.
More than a year ago, I decided to pull money out of Mintos and put it in Crypto. I still have more than 40% of my original Mintos funds “recovering”.
I realise that my investment “calmness” depends on having reasonable access to my money (even though it is mostly invested for the mid-to-long term and could be volatile in the shorter term).
So, my question (finally) : How do you manage this (mentally accept/justify this long-term [potential] recovery) – do you just assume that this money might not be available for a couple of years, if at all? Any other thoughts?
Thanks.
All the best. Colin
Hi Colin,
I think it depends on how much of your overall portfolio is currently “stuck” in recoveries. Is it a large chunk of your total investments?
Luckily for me, around 2.300€ are not that much when looking at my overall investment portfolio (incl. my wife’s assets), so I have no problem waiting it out. Of course I’d prefer this not being the case at all, but sadly I had way too much in Polish Capital Service loans…
I’m still positive regarding the recovery, as Mintos has done a pretty good job with the recoveries of other LOs over the past few months. Then again if it’s certain that some of it can’t be recovered in the end, I’ll count it as a loss, learn from it and move on. For now, I’m accepting it will probably take some time, likely 1 year or more.
Cheers,
Angelo
Thanks Angelo.
No, it’s only a very small portion of my portfolio (you might class it as the “play money” component). So, I will also calmly wait it out. For the moment, I don’t think I will increase my P2P investments, as other investmens have been doing as well, with more reasonable access to the money. Cheers. Colin
Anytime, Colin!
I’m glad to hear that it’s not an amount that would cause you sleepless nights. Yeah, the stock & crypto markets have been on an impressive run since March 2020. But I’m sure we’ll also see less pleasant periods when we’ll be glad to have some money in other investments like P2P lending.
Thanks, Angelo!
You will be very pleasantly surprised if you visit the mountain resorts in Bulgaria in the winter!
My pleasure, Dimitar!
I’d love to see more of Bulgaria. I visited Sofia once 7 years ago and I’ve heard good things about Bansko from some digital nomads – is that one of the places you’d recommend?
Bansko, Borovets, Pamporovo ….! These are wonderful winter resorts in Bulgaria, and the prices you will definitely like …!
Thank you very much Dimitar, I will look into those!
Hello Angelo
You started with the distributing ETF and recently switched to the accumulating one… I’m just about to start buying this ETF on Degiro as well. So just this thought popped up, would it make sense to buy both, distributing and accumulating 50/50? Both are free on Degiro, right… Then can profit of some passive income, while reinvesting the other part.
Does it also make sense to start with a lump sum first, then cost averaging every month? I’m not sure about the timing now, have quite some uncertainty with China etc., On the other side timing doesn’t really matter on long run… Just these funny time we are experiencing now is letting me hesitating little bit. What’s your thoughts on this?
Thanks and best regards,
Raphael
Hi Raphael,
Sure, nothing wrong with splitting between distributing and accumulating! In the end you’re buying the exact same index. The only consideration is to see if buying two instead of one monthly would impact your buying fees on Degiro in any way. But then again, you can buy the accumulating one one month (eg. September) and then only buy the distributing one the next month (eg. October) and so on.
Here’s the part in Degiro’s commission-free ETF list that’s relevant to know:
You can do one transaction (a purchase or sale) per ISIN code, per calendarmonth, without transaction costs. Each subsequent transaction in the same ISIN code (same ETF) will also be executed without transaction costs, if:
- The transaction is in the same direction (buy/sell) as the first transaction that month;
- The transaction value is at least 1000 EUR, GBP or USD.
While I can’t give you investment advice, I think the most important part is to get started right away. You’ll never time the market perfectly, and that feeling will never go away either 🙂
Lump sum first and then averaging every month sounds like a good idea.
Also think of it like this:
Is what you have available to invest now most of what you’ll earn over your lifetime (eg. you’re >65 and about to retire) or do you have most of your earning potential (compared to your current savings) still ahead of you? If the latter is the case (as it is with me), then I wouldn’t waste any time thinking about the right time to enter the market.