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![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUdfZ892X74y22kzcEduVeAVFGXzf7WzmVDmNQDrvPPMf/image.png)

This is part of a series on how much delegators get from investing in bid-bots. See https://busy.org/@verodato/the-return-of-the-bid-bot for more information. 

The visual and analytic exploration of the bid-bots funding and expenses continues today with the @buildawhale bid-bot. It was created in August 2017 and operates almost exclusively with funds delegated from two big accounts: @blocktrades and @minority-report. 

Remember that delegations are temporary transfers of resources to the bid-bot account while expenses are permanent transfers made from the bid-bot account to other accounts. Expenses include interest payments to delegators and also refunds, messages (small value transfers with a text – the message – in the memo field), and other payments. The chart below shows the @buildawhale expenses by the type of the memo field of the transfer transaction. Most of the transfers did not have a text in the memo field until recently, and after that most transfers have been made using encrypted memo (a way to send a secret text to the account that receives the transfer). So the memo field does not reveal what we’d like to know: what are the interest payments to delegators?

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfJXvSzqnEFfHejnpdqgBjsqfc8piwkmN5PjMM7cmvi9c/image.png)

When expenses are aggregated by the destination account, we get the results in the chart below. Here we can see that two accounts receive most of the expenses, @themarkymark and @alpha. But these are not the two main accounts that delegate to @buildawhale. @themarkymark is the creator of the @buildawhale account and a Steem witness (https://steemit.com/@themarkymark). Because we know that the @alpha account is associated with @blocktrades (https://steemd.com/@alpha), we can calculate a rate of return from the delegation of @blocktrades, considering that the interest payments related to this delegation are made to the @alpha account. 

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbPYKec31xcHAWPuup82drV4sHiK2a5CkJriJUoADYq65/image.png)

The delegation from @blocktrades started in September 2017 but interest payments from the bid-bot to @alpha - @blocktrades apparently started only in January 2018, as can be seen in the table below (values are in STEEM). The sum of all interest payments is $ 232,915. Divided by the monthly mean delegation balance of $ 1,170,260 results in a rate of return of 20% for the entire period of 10 months, or 22% annualized. This seems to be the best estimate of the return of the @buildawhale bid-bot, considering the information available. 

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZwvopeHD6iNikCdDgQxAN8ATEiBVhMkXGD3Hm3j3RD1k/image.png)