The question of if this is the best logic is debatable.

I am not familiar with poloniex's policies regarding minimum interest amounts, however on bitfinex, lenders will receive a minimum of one hour's worth of interest even if the loan is repaid in one second (or if it is repaid after 59 minutes, 59 seconds, or anywhere in between), so if you make one loan that is repaid after 5 minutes, then 2 minutes later make a second loan that is repaid after 5 minutes, then after 12 minutes you have made 2 hours worth of interest. This will give lenders an incentive to price their loans so they will be quickly taken.

On the other hand, if you place your loan offer a little bit deeper in the lending book, your offer might sit there for a few hours, however your loan would have a higher interest rate (potentially), and if your loan remains outstanding for long enough, then the extra interest you receive might make up for the time you are receiving no interest while your offer is sitting in the lending book.

Loans with longer durations tend to be able command higher interest rates because borrowers want to be able to lock in their interest rate for the duration of their trade, so if you use the later strategy, then your interest rate is already starting off higher, although longer term loans tend to get repaid quickly less frequently. There is no right or wrong strategy, and what is more profitable today might be less profitable tomorrow, or next month.


1 - There is an argument that UASF will result in at least temporary lower prices because of uncertainty, although this is hardly a guarantee. If you do this, then you will potentially have the opportunity to buy more BTC at lower prices, but also have the risk of loosing out on price gains on the BTC you hold. This will be the option that will result in your USD buying power to be the closest to guaranteed to be the same. You can lend out your USD on bitfinex and earn some interest on it (you can create a bot for their platform if you wish).

If you lend out BTC via a loan on poloniex, then you will receive a high interest rate that might be greater than the amount you would lose if/when UASF successfully activates. You could end up holding a worthless coin in the event that UASF is successful and poloniex gives you credit for the failed chain, or you could end up with a coin that has the same value it does today because UASF fails, and end up with a lot of interest because of elevated interest rates.

2 - If you are not an "adventure investor" you almost certainly do not want to invest in altcoins. Altcoins are very speculative even by cryptocurrency standards. Many of them have however performed very well against BTC and USD in recent months, although I don't know if this will continue to be the case.

3 - This option is the most likely to result in you maintaining the BTC value of your BTC holdings. This is probably your best bet if you simply want to be 'long' BTC. One issue with this is that deposits/withdrawals will almost certainly be suspended at all/most exchanges around the time UASF (attempts to) activate(s), so you probably wont be able to trade if you do not already have a balance on an exchange. If you are holding your BTC on an exchange when UASF attempts to activate (that will give you immediate credit for your USAF coins), then you might be able to sell your UASF coins if you could see that this chain was about to "fail".