6 Steps To Use The Anchor Protocol From Singapore (Explained)

The Anchor Protocol is one of the more popular ways that you can earn really high yields on a stablecoin such as UST.

If you’re looking to earn the high interest rate from Singapore, the process is rather complicated!

Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started:

How to use the Anchor Protocol from Singapore

Here are 6 steps to use the Anchor Protocol in Singapore:

1. Deposit USD into FTX
2. Sell USD to USDT on FTX
3. Send USDT to another exchange that supports UST via a network besides ERC20
4. Sell USDT for UST
5. Send UST to your Terra Station wallet
6. Connect your Terra Station wallet to Anchor Protocol and deposit UST

And here is each step explained further:

Deposit USD into FTX

The first step that you’ll need to do is to deposit USD into FTX.

We will be depositing USD to the FTX Pro platform, and not the FTX App, and you can find out the differences between these 2 platforms here.

This is because sending USD to FTX via DBS Remit is free, and you will incur a fee if you remit SGD to FTX instead.

Furthermore, USD has a direct trading pair with USDT (almost at a 1:1 ratio), while there is no direct trading pair between SGD and USDT.

As such, it will be best for you to send over USD to FTX, instead of SGD.

To do so, you will need to use DBS Remit to send USD from your bank account to FTX. To obtain USD, you can do it via 3 ways:

• Convert SGD to USD on Tiger Brokers and withdraw USD to your DBS account
• Convert SGD to USD on moomoo and withdraw USD to your DBS account
• Use the exchange rate on DBS Remit to convert SGD to USD

Here are the pros and cons of each method:

Platform	Pros	Cons
Tiger Brokers	Best SGD to USD rate	You can only withdraw USD to your bank account 2 days after the conversion
moomoo	You can withdraw USD to your bank account immediately after the conversion	Rate is not as good compared to Tiger Brokers
DBS Remit	Most convenient method	Exchange rate is the worst

You can read my guide on depositing to FTX from Singapore to find out more.

Sell USD to USDT on FTX

Once you have USD on FTX, the next step will be to buy USDT from the funds that you’ve deposited.

You’ll need to go to the hamburger icon on the left-hand side of FTX’s platform,

and then search for ‘USDT‘ under Spot. You will need to select the USD/USDT trading pair.

You can make 7 different orders on FTX:

1. Limit
2. Market
3. Stop market
4. Stop limit
5. Trailing stop
6. Take profit
7. Take profit limit

After selecting your order type, you’ll need to:

1. Select the amount of USDT you want to buy 1 USD at
2. Select the amount of USDT you want to buy

Although USD and USDT are supposed to be traded 1:1, you may lose a bit of value due to the spread.

Once your order has been processed, USDT will be credited to your FTX account.

Send USDT to another exchange that supports UST via a network besides ERC20

After you have obtained USDT, the next step will be to send USDT to an exchange platform that supports UST.

This is because FTX does not currently support UST on their platform.

Here are some of the platforms that you can consider:

Platform	Trading Fee	UST Withdrawal Fee
KuCoin	Up to 0.1%	4 UST
Huobi	Up to 0.2%	0 UST
Gate.io	Up to 0.2%	5 UST
Bitfinex	Up to 0.2%	0 UST

Huobi or Bitfinex will be the best options, particularly since they do not charge any UST withdrawal fees. However, you may want to note that Huobi will be banned in Singapore after 31st March 2022.

To reduce the fees when you are withdrawing USDT to these platforms, you will have to use another network apart from the ERC20 network.

This is because if you make a withdrawal of USDT via the ERC20 network, the fees can be really high!

FTX supports other networks, such as:

• Binance Smart Chain (BEP20)
• TRC20
• Solana

One of FTX’s main advantages is that withdrawals via any other network apart from the ERC20 network are free! As such, you can use any of these networks to deposit USDT.

However, you will need to ensure that the platform that you’re depositing to supports the network that you intend to use:

Platform	Supported Networks (USDT)
KuCoin	TRC20
Huobi	TRC20, SOL
Gate.io	TRC20, BEP20, SOL
Bitfinex	TRC20, SOL

This is the most important step, as you will need to use the correct deposit address and the correct network to transfer USDT over.

Otherwise, your funds will be lost forever!

Sell USDT for UST

Once you have sent UST to the platform of your choice, the next step will be to sell your USDT for UST.

In this example, I will be using KuCoin for the trade.

When you deposit your USDT into your KuCoin account, it will be transferred to your Main Account.

If you wish to trade your USDT to UST, you will need to transfer it to your Trading Account.

After you’ve transferred your crypto to your Trading Account, you can go to KuCoin’s Spot Exchange.

This will bring you to KuCoin’s trading platform.

If you want to buy UST from USDT, you’ll need to search for ‘USDT‘ and select UST.

After selecting the USDT/UST trading pair, you can proceed to make the order.

KuCoin allows you to make 4 different orders:

1. Limit
2. Market
3. Stop Limit
4. Stop Market

However, you’ll need to go to the ‘Sell USDT‘ tab. This is because you’re selling USDT to buy UST.

Although it’s supposed to be a 1:1 switch between USDT and UST, the exchange rate on the market is less than 1.

As such, you may lose some of your UST to this difference in the rate.

This process is the same for any of the other exchanges, where you will need to trade using the USDT/UST trading pair.

Although it is supposed to be 1:1, you may lose some funds due to the less favourable exchange rate.

Send UST to your Terra Station wallet

Once you have obtained UST, the next step will be to send your UST to your Terra Station wallet.

This is because the only way that you are able to interact with the Anchor Protocol is by using this decentralised wallet. You will not be able to connect your centralised exchange account to Anchor Protocol.

After obtaining your Terra Station wallet address,

you will need to withdraw UST using the Terra network to this wallet.

For Huobi and Bitfinex, you are only able to send UST using the native Terra network. However, the other 2 platforms (Gate.io or KuCoin) allow you to withdraw UST using different networks.

Your Terra Station wallet only accepts UST deposits using the Terra network. If you deposit UST using any of these other networks, your UST may be lost forever!

If you are looking to send UST from any of these platforms to your Terra Station wallet, you can view these platform-specific guides:

1. KuCoin to Terra Station
2. Huobi to Terra Station

Connect your Terra Station wallet to Anchor Protocol and deposit UST

Once you have received UST in your Terra Station wallet, the next step will be to deposit UST into Anchor Protocol.

To do so, you will need to select the ‘Connect Wallet‘ button on the right hand corner of the Anchor dashboard, and then select ‘Terra Station‘ as the option to connect your wallet.

After selecting the ‘Connect Wallet‘ button,

You will be given the option to either connect your Terra Station wallet via the Chrome extension, or via Wallet Connect.

If you already have the Chrome extension of Terra Station installed, it will connect to Anchor Protocol automatically.

Once your Terra Station wallet is connected, you will need to go to the ‘Earn‘ tab on Anchor.

On the dashboard, you will need to go to select ‘Deposit‘.

This will allow you to deposit UST into Anchor Protocol.

For the last step, you will need to decide the amount of UST you wish to deposit into Anchor Protocol.

Each transaction will incur a transaction fee, so you may want to minimise the number of transactions to deposit UST into Anchor Protocol.

However, the good thing is that the fees on the Terra network are much lower compared to other networks like Ethereum.

Once you have confirmed the transaction on your Terra Station wallet, the UST will be deposited into Anchor Protocol.

This will allow you to start earning interest on your UST!

When you deposit UST into Anchor, you will notice that your UST is now converted into aUST.

You can view my comparison between aUST and UST to find out more about these 2 cryptocurrencies.

Why is the process so complicated?

If you’re wondering why this process is very complicated, here are 2 reasons why:

UST is not supported by most cryptocurrency platforms

There are not many platforms that support UST, as compared to other stablecoins such as BUSD or USDT. Furthermore, some of these platforms such as Binance are banned in Singapore.

There are currently no USD/UST or SGD/UST trading pairs, which means that you’ll have to make at least 2 trades before you can buy UST. As such, the easiest way to do so is:

1. Buy USDT on a platform
2. Send USDT to a platform that has the USDT/UST trading pair
3. Trade USDT for UST

Although Gemini supports UST, it is the ERC20 version and not the Terra version. If you want to send UST from Gemini to your Terra Station wallet, you will still need to send it to a platform that supports both ERC20 and Terra versions of UST first.

There are not many fiat on-ramp options in Singapore

The few platforms that support UST do not support fiat deposits from Singapore. Since FTX is one of the few where you can deposit USD at no costs, this is the first way that you can buy cryptocurrencies from fiat currencies in Singapore.

An alternative way to deposit fiat and receive crypto is by remitting USD to Crypto.com, and receiving USDC in return. You can view my guide on buying USDC from Singapore for more information.

However, there are not many ways that you can convert USDC to UST directly apart from KuCoin, so your options are rather limited too.

What are the fees for this process?

Here are some of the estimated fees that you’ll incur during this entire process:

Transaction	Estimated Fee
Exchange SGD to USD	Spread from the platform you use
Remit USD using DBS Remit	Free
Convert USD to USDT on FTX	Up to 0.07% trading fee + difference in 1:1 exchange rate
Send USDT via another network besides ERC20	Free
Trade USDT to UST	Depends on the platform you choose (0.01 – 0.02%)
Withdraw UST to Terra Station	Depends on the platform you choose (0 – 4 UST)
Deposit UST to Anchor Protocol	Transaction fee (around 1 UST)

Ultimately, the fees that you incur will not be that high, so it is possible to send a small amount to the Anchor Protocol.

Whenever I am transferring from one platform to another, I will always do a test withdrawal first to make sure that everything is ok before sending over the entire sum.

I would highly recommend that you do it too, so that you can confirm that everything is working!

Most importantly, it will be best not to use the ERC20 network to withdraw USDT to the platform of your choice. Otherwise, you will incur a rather large withdrawal fee!

Conclusion

Using the Anchor Protocol from Singapore can be really complicated, but it will be worth it once you’ve finally deposited your funds and started earning the interest.

If you wish to withdraw your funds from the Anchor Protocol, the process is exactly the same as above, except now it will be the reverse.

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