Borrowing against bitcoin: the lenders

You send bitcoin to Strike and borrow up to half its value in dollars, at a fixed rate for 12 months or as a credit line you can draw on. Interest is charged on what you borrow; there are no fees to open, to repay early, or if Strike has to sell. If the price falls until the loan is 70% of the collateral’s value, Strike emails a margin call and you have 72 hours to add bitcoin or repay enough to get back under 65%; at 85% it sells just enough bitcoin to get there itself. Strike also offers a 6-month “volatility-proof” loan that opens at 40% and can never be sold because of price, at a higher rate; missing a payment can still cost the collateral. Your bitcoin is held by Strike or the firms that fund its loans, and Strike says it is never lent on again.

You send bitcoin to Ledn and borrow up to half its value in dollars for 12 months, with interest building up and due when the loan ends. If the price falls until the loan is 70% and then 75% of the collateral’s value, Ledn emails you to add bitcoin or repay; at 80% it sells automatically, and that sale can’t be reversed. The rate depends on loan size, from 11.49% for small loans to 9.25% above $2 million. Ledn holds the bitcoin as a “custodied loan”: it may pass it to the institution funding the loan, but no one may lend it out, and Ledn publishes proof of reserves. Taking excess bitcoin back during the loan is tightly limited.

You send bitcoin (or ether or solana) to a wallet set aside for you and borrow 50% to 75% of its value for 12 months, interest only, with a 1% fee to open; you can defer all the interest to the end. If the price falls, Figure sends notices to restore the loan’s opening ratio; its calculator implies a 50% loan is warned at 75%, but the point at which Figure sells, and how long you get, aren’t published. For 2% up front in ten states, “Liquidation Protection” stops price-triggered sales on 50% bitcoin loans. The wallet address can be checked on the blockchain, and Figure says the bitcoin is never lent on; it stays locked until the loan is fully repaid.

You send bitcoin to Arch, which holds it at Anchorage Digital Bank, and borrow up to 60% of its value for 1 to 12 months, renewable. Interest is paid monthly or at the end; the rate depends on loan size and includes an opening fee. If the price falls until the loan is 70% of the collateral’s value you have 24 hours to add bitcoin or repay back to 60%; at 80% Arch sells just enough to get there, with a 2% fee. Arch says it never lends your bitcoin on. Its own pages disagree on which states it serves and on some rates, so the quote in its app is the one that counts.

You send bitcoin to SALT and borrow 30%, 50% or 70% of its value for 1, 3 or 5 years at a fixed rate; the smaller the share you borrow, the lower the rate. You can pay interest monthly, pay interest and principal monthly, or let the interest build to the end. SALT warns you at 75%, 83.33% and 88% of the collateral’s value, with no fixed time to act; at 90.91% it either sells your bitcoin (5% fee) or, if you chose “Stabilization” in advance, converts it to a dollar stablecoin instead (3% fee, and 2% to convert back once the loan is under 83.33%). SALT says it never lends your bitcoin on, but doesn’t name its custodian on its product pages and may move the bitcoin between custodians.

You send bitcoin or ether to a cold-storage wallet set aside for you at BitGo Trust, whose address you can check, and borrow 20% to 60% of its value for 3 to 60 months at a fixed rate; US borrowers are paid in the USDC stablecoin. Interest accrues daily and is billed monthly, or can be deferred to the end; closing early costs at least three months’ interest. APX makes no margin call as such: it sends notices from 80% and, at 90%, sells only enough bitcoin to bring the loan back to 85%, with no fee. APX says it never pools or lends your bitcoin on, while its own risk disclosure warns that in an APX bankruptcy your claim could be treated as unsecured.

You deposit bitcoin with Lava and open a credit line you can draw on at up to 60% of its value, repay when you like, and draw again; there are no monthly payments and no end date. The rate is fixed for a year and depends on your balance, and Lava adds a 2% “capital charge” on the year’s highest balance. Lava makes no margin calls: it warns you as the loan grows against the collateral and shows a liquidation price in the app when you draw. If that price is hit, Lava sells everything and returns nothing; the excess is kept as the fee. Lava says the bitcoin is never lent on, and describes how it is held in two different ways.

Inside a Kraken Pro account, you borrow against the assets you hold there, at a fixed rate for a term from two days to two years, and can withdraw the loan to a bank. Kraken doesn’t use a loan-to-value line: it discounts each asset by a set percentage and tracks a “margin level” across your whole account, calling at 80% of that measure and selling at 40%; the app shows your liquidation threshold before you confirm. The collateral stays in your exchange wallet. In the US the product is open only to “eligible contract participants”, roughly people with more than $10 million invested, in 40 states, with a $75,000 minimum.

Kraken Borrow US is buying power, not a loan you can withdraw: when you buy crypto for more than your cash balance, Kraken lends the difference, up to three times the value of your eligible assets, and the crypto you buy with it is held as security until you repay. The borrowed dollars can only buy more crypto on Kraken. There is no repayment deadline and no minimum payment; you pay a one-time borrowing fee plus daily interest at a rate shown before you confirm and not published. Kraken shows a health status rather than a loan-to-value line; at “At risk” it sells automatically, and losses can exceed what you put in. It is available in 48 states to customers who are not “eligible contract participants”, the opposite of Flexline.

You hold crypto in a Nexo account and draw a credit line against it, up to 50% of the value of bitcoin, with no fixed term and no scheduled payments. Interest compounds daily at a rate that depends on how much of your portfolio is held in Nexo’s own NEXO token: 15.9% with none, down to 7.9%, and under 3% only with NEXO and a loan under 20% of the collateral. Nexo may email a margin call as the loan passes 71%, 77% and 83.33% of the collateral’s value, but at 83.33% it sells part or all of your crypto automatically, with a fee of 2% to 3.5% plus the spread, and no time to act. The collateral sits in a pooled exchange wallet; whether Nexo may lend it on isn’t published for the US. Nexo returned to the US in February 2026 after paying $45 million to regulators in 2023.

You and a lender each commit bitcoin to a Discreet Log Contract on the blockchain, in which every possible outcome is signed in advance; Cadena holds no key, and an independent oracle only chooses which pre-signed transaction settles. The lender never pays you cash: you sell your own bitcoin separately for the money, and the contract gives you back the exposure through the locked collateral. At maturity, one year as standard, the lender’s dollar target (the principal plus 12%) is paid out of the pool in bitcoin at that day’s price and you receive whatever remains. There are no margin calls, no payments and no early exit; at a 50% fall your residual is zero, and below that the lender absorbs the loss. The borrower pays a 1% fee, in bitcoin.

You post a request and one of Debifi’s named institutional lenders funds it in stablecoins or bank money. Your bitcoin goes into an address that needs three of four keys: yours, the lender’s, Debifi’s, and an independent key holder’s, so neither side can move it alone. You borrow 30% to 70% of its value for 1 to 24 months, paying interest monthly to yearly and the principal at the end, with 1% to 1.5% to open. Margin calls come at 75%, 80% and 85%; at 90%, or a stricter line the lender sets, the bitcoin is released to the lender at Debifi’s price feed, less a 5% fee, with any surplus returned. An optional 12–48 hour delay lets you cancel a liquidation by restoring the opening ratio.

You post an offer, an investor takes it, and your bitcoin goes into an escrow address on the blockchain. The escrow needs three signatures: two belong to Firefish’s oracles and one is a temporary key of yours that pre-signs every way the loan can end and is then deleted, so no one can send the bitcoin anywhere else. You receive the loan in euros, another European currency or a stablecoin, borrowing up to half of what the loan plus its full interest comes to, and repay in one sum at the end; the full term’s interest is owed even if you repay early. Firefish emails margin calls at 73%, 79% and 86%, which only adding bitcoin can fix; if the loan touches 95% of the collateral’s value, even for seconds, the entire collateral goes to the investor.

A peer-to-peer market with no identity check: another user lends you stablecoins or crypto against bitcoin locked in an address that needs two of three keys: yours, the lender’s and the platform’s. You borrow 30% to 70% of its value for 1 to 12 months at a rate the lender set, fixed as a sum for the term, with 1.5% to open. Margin calls come at 75%, 80% and 85%; at 90% the bitcoin is handed to the lender at the platform’s price, less 5%, and anything over the debt comes back. Loans are capped at $25,000, and since June 2026 the terms bar anyone in the United States.

You and Unchained put your bitcoin into an address that needs two of three keys: yours, Unchained’s, and an independent bank’s. You can check the address on your own hardware wallet, and Unchained says it never lends the bitcoin on. You borrow up to half its value for 360 days at 12% plus a 2% fee, paying interest every 30 days and the principal at the end; loans must be for a business purpose, with a $500,000 minimum for individuals. If the price falls until the loan is two-thirds of the collateral’s value, you have 24 hours to add bitcoin or repay; at 83%, Unchained sells enough to repay the whole loan and closes it, returning what is left.

You ask Coinbase for a loan; it converts your bitcoin into cbBTC, its own token standing for bitcoin it holds, and locks it in a Morpho lending contract on the Base network, from which you borrow USDC. A variable loan has no term or due dates and a rate set by that market plus a Coinbase fee; a fixed loan is repaid in full at maturity, or sold whatever the price. Coinbase adds 2% to the loan on every draw. There is no margin call: Coinbase emails a “Danger” warning from 77.4% of the collateral’s value, and at 86% the contract sells enough to restore the loan, with a 4.38% penalty. Coinbase says it cannot stop that sale, because it doesn’t control the protocol.

You connect your own wallet to the Morpho app and deposit cbBTC, Coinbase’s token standing for bitcoin it holds, into a market that lends USDC against it, up to 86% of its value. There is no identity check, no term and no fees beyond the network’s; interest at a variable rate is added to the loan. There is no warning of any kind: the moment the loan passes 86% of the collateral’s value at the protocol’s price feed, anyone may sell any amount of it and keep a 4.38% penalty. Coinbase’s own loan product uses this same market, with its fee on top.

You connect your own wallet to the Aave app and deposit WBTC or cbBTC, tokens issued by firms that hold the real bitcoin, into a pool that lends them out and lets you borrow dollars (USDC or USDT) against them, up to 73% of their value. Interest at a variable rate, set by how much of the pool is lent, is added to the loan; there is no term and no identity check. The pool watches a “health factor” rather than sending margin calls: once the loan passes 78% of the collateral’s value, anyone may sell up to half of it, or all of it below a lower threshold, keeping a 5% to 7.5% penalty. The dollar side can run short: on the day read, 99.8% of the USDC pool was lent out and borrowing it cost 15%.

Milo lends you up to the full price of a home, with bitcoin pledged equal to the loan and held by BitGo or Coinbase Custody for the life of the mortgage. The loan is a 30-year fixed, interest-only mortgage at 7–9%, with the principal repaid when you sell, refinance or choose to; fees are 2–4% of the loan. Because the house is collateral too, a margin call comes only after bitcoin falls about 65–69%, and the point at which Milo would sell is in the loan documents rather than on its site. Bitcoin above about 125% of the loan can be withdrawn; the rest cannot be lent on, staked or converted. A separate Milo mortgage counts bitcoin as reserves, with no pledge at all.

Better writes an ordinary Fannie Mae-conforming mortgage plus a second loan for the down payment, secured by bitcoin pledged through Coinbase and counted at 40% of its value, at the same rate and term with one monthly payment. You qualify on income and credit like any conforming borrower. The bitcoin price has no effect on either loan: the bitcoin is sold only if you fall 60 days behind on payments, and the house itself can be foreclosed from 180 days. Better holds the bitcoin in its own Coinbase Prime account until the whole mortgage is repaid or refinanced; whether it may reuse the bitcoin meanwhile isn’t stated on its pages.