Compare Ledn vs Luno

Ledn has a very simple model. As soon as you deposit either BTC or USDC then those deposits immediately start earning interest. There is no need to manually transfer the money to a savings account once on the Ledn platform. This means that when you need to withdraw funds, you can withdraw them directly from the savings account. Savings accounts have no lock in period and you can withdraw your funds at any time.

Withdrawals are processed manually and Ledn states that the vast majority of requests are processed within 24 hours, but that the terms of the savings account stipulate that it can take up to 7 days. In our tests, withdrawals took about 30 hours from the time of request to the funds arriving in your wallet.

Ledn does not charge any withdrawal fees on BTC, however you must pay the miner's fees associated with the withdrawal. These fees will be deducted from the amount that you withdraw. There is a minimum withdrawal amount of 0.0005 BTC. For USDC withdrawals a fee does apply which is 35 USDC.

Ledn state in their FAQ that some withdrawal requests may require a confirmatory video call with the platform.

To date Ledn has never frozen withdrawals on any of their currencies.

In order to make withdrawals from Luno you must first enable send mode on the app. Once you requested that this mode is enabled you will then need to wait 24 hours before the mode is enabled. Whilst this does provide extra security, it can be annoying if you want to withdraw the funds quickly and have not already enabled this mode.

In our tests, withdrawals were processed quickly once "send mode" had been enabled. Withdrawal requests were processed by Luno within a few minutes of the request being made and funds were normally received in less than a hour.

Luno does not charge withdrawal fees, however you do still have to pay the network fee to withdraw from the platform. This fee will be deducted form the amount that is sent.

There is no record of Luno ever having frozen withdrawals.

Ledn accounts feature 2 factor authentication for key activities such as login and withdrawals. You can whitelist withdrawal addresses so that funds can only be sent to those addresses. You can also add a personal anti-phishing phrase to the site. This phrase will be included in any emails sent to you which will help you to verify that the email was sent by Ledn and not an impersonator.

Ledn state in their FAQs that assets deposited on the platform are not loaned out to borrowers and instead 100% of these deposits are stored with a third party cold storage custodian, Bitgo. However, elsewhere in their FAQs they state that they may in fact lend out these assets to a borrower and will not necessarily hold an equivalent amount of crypto as collateral. They go on to state that their primary borrower is Genesis. So we have mixed messages from Ledn about the extent to which deposits are loaned out, but in all likelihood deposits are loaned out as this is how they generate a return to pass on to you.

One unique feature of Ledn is that you can verify that your deposit really does exist in Ledn's accounts. This is done by way of a an attestation by Armanino LLP, a top tier accountancy firm. The Ledn web app provides a link to the Armanino asset verification page. Here you can enter a unique hash associated with your account which then reveals Armanino audit of your personal assets. The ability to verify personal individual assets in this way is quite unique and very reassuring. Other platforms that have implemented proof of reserves systems normally show that the total assets of the company exceed total customer liabilities, but there is no way to verify your individual assets.

Luno offers the usual security features to prevent unauthorised access to crypto assets. The majority of crypto assets are stored in cold storage, secured and insured by BitGo. A hot wallet is used to store working capital and this wallet is a three key multisignature wallet, meaning that more than one key is required to access the funds and each key is stored in a different, secure location. Two factor authentication is available within the Luno app to make access to your account more secure.

Luno employs Mazars, an accountancy firm, to independently verify that the value of the crypto assets stored with Luno do actually exist. An example of the report can be found here. This audit is undertaken quarterly. It should be noted that the the audit verifies that the total value of the assets currently held by Luno exceeds the total value of customer liabilities (deposits). This demonstrates that any loans that Luno has made of depositor's funds have been overcollareralised (i.e. Luno has secured collateral of a greater value than the loan amount before granting the loan). The audit does not consider the liquidity of those collateral assets, meaning how easy it would be to sell those assets at market value if Luno was forced to sell them to cover a bad debt.

In order to generate yield, Luno lends out funds via Genesis, the world's largest digital asset lender. The exact lending strategy used and types of loans issued is not clear, but some reassurance can be taken from that the all loans are granted through this provider and the Mazar's indpendent audit proves that Luno has overcollateralised its loans.

Luno has embraced regulation and sought to preempt regulatory obligations by implementing some of the anticpiate policies before they were forced to do so.

Luno are very careful to prevent unauthorised withdrawals. By default, withdrawals from your wallet are not enabled. You will need to manually enabled "send mode" to allow withdrawals, and as an additional security precaution, this takes 24 hours to be activated.