As one of my diversification methods I decided to invest in two Beacon (BECN) masternodes. This is a high-risk investment as the coin has a very low market cap and has no defined use case at this time, however they provide around 300% ROI per year and, like most traditional masternodes the rewards drip in daily and the collateral can be removed at any time.
This is not a ‘sexy’ node
Well, not yet anyway!
There are lots of hyped tokens around at the moment and Beacon is certainly not one of them. It is an old masternode coin from ‘back in the day’ when masternodes first started to become popular early 2018. Like many coins from this era, it has been neglected/abandoned for a few years.
This is an intermediate-level opportunity; you will need to be comfortable buying low-cap coins on small exchanges with limited liquidity.
Why did I buy a Beacon masternode?
If it ain't sexy why did I buy it? Yieldnodes took Beacon over in March 2021, started working it and injecting some life into it alongside several other coins as part of their DECENOMY network, whereby they revive old coins and give them a purpose.
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Yieldnodes and have been using them and building my passive income stack since December 2020. During that time, I’ve seen lots of progress and great communication, so I felt Beacon at around 300% APR (and the DECENOMY vision) could be a worthwhile , but high risk, investment.
As yet, Beacon does not have a website or defined use case. Currently this is being discussed by the community. You can join the discussion on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/6wSRdwdzUz
Where to buy Beacon – liquidity and exchanges
I’d initially looked at Beacon back in August, attracted by the high yield, however the main liquidity for the token was on Crex, an exchange not accessible to the UK. Liquidity on other exchanges was painfully low — almost impossible to purchase. One of the guys on their Discord even offered to transfer some coins into Graviex for me to purchase! However, I decided against as there would be nowhere for me to easily sell my rewards.
This is one of the big problems with many of these masternode coins; they only exist on small exchanges and liquidity is low. See this post about buying micro-cap cryptos and things you need to be aware of.
In September/October more liquidity became available on Graviex and HelioBank/Birake, both of which can be used from the UK. So I decided to purchase.
I created my nodes using Flits app – a simple wallet that enables you to create a node in a couple of clicks. There are other masternode hosting companies available too, however due to the ease of use, I went for Flits. You can read more about Flits app here.
Beacon node rewards
I have two nodes and between them they produce around 100 coins per day (varies slightly but usually 4 x 26). Each node requires 5,000 coins for collateral. I paid around $0.60 per coin, approx $3,000 per node. Note that the node requirements / rewards change over time and masternodes will need to be updated with additional collateral.
View the explorer here: https://explorer.decenomy.net/BECN/overview
As you can see, at block 300,001 each node requires 7,000 coins as collateral. However the rewards also increase from 26 to 39.
That’s an increase of around 30% in collateral, but around 50% increase in rewards.
Whilst this is definitely not a glamorous or sexy coin, it’s something different from my $OHM, $TIME, $STRONG etc and I feel the Yieldnodes guys are working hard to make their masternodes business succeed. Yes, it’s high risk, but at least it’s spread!
We’ll see how it goes and if I decide to update both nodes when the 7,000 collateral requirement comes along (first week in December) using my rewards or sell a node and drop to one.