Bybit ETH Flexible Savings is the Flexible Term tier of Bybit Earn's Easy Earn product, an on-demand custodial earn account on the Bybit exchange. Deposited ETH is lent to Bybit and deployed in its own lending book, with no on-chain staking involved. The displayed 0.8% APR is a flat base rate with no tiering, and redemption is instant with no lock-up or fee.
CC
High RiskPotential BB+
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CurrentPotential
This rating is based solely on publicly available information. Custodial platform risk assessed across Security, Strategy and Operations on the AAA–D scale. The range from CC to BB+ reflects the gap between the current assessment and the potential rating achievable if all identified improvement areas are addressed.
OTROperator Track Record49
TVTransparency & Verifiability45
RLSRegulatory & Legal Standing19
YSYield & Strategy59
LTLiquidity & Terms70
Market Details
FeeNo subscription or redemption fee; management fee embedded in the displayed APR, quantum undisclosed
CustodianSelf-custody (no third-party custodian named)
InsuranceNo (the ~$1.1157bn Insurance Fund is futures-liquidation only and does not cover Earn or spot; its ETH pools total ~51,832 ETH / ~$123.2m across 76 per-contract-group pools)
Founded Since2018
Strategy TypeLending
Proof Of ReservesYes (monthly Merkle-tree PoR attested by Hacken OU; liabilities in scope, ~350–450 addresses published, self-serve per-user verification; ETH reported at 102% — 541,412 ETH owed against 553,776 ETH held in the 38th report, 22 Jul 2026; limitations statement only in the attestor's report, not on Bybit's own PoR page; 50 assets in scope)
Supported AssetsETH
Regulatory LicensesContracting entity Bybit Technology Limited (Seychelles, reg. 226958) — unlicensed; group licences held by other entities: MiCA CASP (Bybit EU GmbH, Austria FMA, 28 May 2025, passported to 29 EEA states), UAE SCA/CMA Virtual Asset Platform Operator (Bybit Virtual Asset Platform Operator LLC, 9 Oct 2025), AFSA Kazakhstan (AFSA-A-LA-2024-0027), Türkiye CMB, India FIU-IND, Indonesia OJK; no Dubai VARA licence; not offered in the US, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong or mainland China
Stated Withdrawal TimeInstant
Component Ratings
SecurityCC45
StrategyCCC63
OperationsC37
Key Strengths
S1Eight years of continuously verifiable operation at genuine scale — incorporated 22 August 2018, $14.257bn of tracked assets, more than 65,000,000 liability holders in the attested proof of reserves, and 541,412 ETH of user ETH liabilities (DefiLlama CEX transparency)
S2The strongest demonstrated stress record of any rated custodial provider, and it was denominated in ETH — through the largest exchange hack on record, which took 401,347 ETH, withdrawals were never paused, clearing 99.994% of more than 350,000 requests within ten hours, with 1:1 ETH backing restored within three days (Bybit security incident timeline)
S3Recurring, published independent assurance over reserves — a monthly Hacken OU engagement since June 2024, each report retrievable in full at a stable URL (Hacken case study)
S4A proof of reserves that actually proves liabilities, with a per-asset ETH figure — a Merkle liability tree across every client balance above zero, ETH at 102% (541,412 owed against 553,776 held), and an MIT-licensed self-serve validator whose exact commit hash the attestor pins in each report (bybit-exchange/merkle-proof)
S5The headline ETH rate is the rate a depositor actually receives — hasTieredApr false, tierAprDetails empty and no bonus events, so 0.8% is the base rate for every depositor with no tier, balance cap, lock-up gate or native-token requirement. This is the one question on which the ETH product outscores its USDC sibling (Bybit Earn product API)
Key Risks
R1The contracting counterparty is an unlicensed offshore company with no capital floor — a Seychelles IBC with no financial-services licence, no identified AML supervisor and no parent recorded; the group's real licences sit in entities that do not offer this product, and UAE VAPO users are expressly excluded from it (GLEIF LEI record)
R2The terms take title to the ETH — the risk disclosure states the user "temporarily loses legal ownership rights to the assets lent", the user is contractually defined as the Lender, and no trust, bailee or insolvency-segregation clause exists in the global terms (Risk Disclosure)
R3Unlimited contractual re-use with no like-amount obligation — the earn terms grant an irrevocable authority to deal with subscribed assets "in any way it deems fit", with no cap, no collateralisation requirement and no retention covenant; the broadest such clause in the rated set (Easy Earn Terms and Conditions v2.0)
R4No loss backstop of any kind reaches Earn or spot balances — there is no SAFU equivalent, the insurance fund is a futures-liquidation mechanism by its own definition, and its ETH pools would cover only about 9.5% of ETH user liabilities even if they applied (Insurance Fund definition)
R5No named custodian and no verified custody certification — self-custody described only in marketing terms, no MPC vendor named, no signing threshold disclosed, contradictory public statements on the cold-storage share, and a February 2025 compromise of an Ethereum cold wallet on the very model still advertised (User protection page)
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