Bitcoin Borrowing And Lending: Stay Safe Out There
Certain Bitcoin Borrowing And Lending Services Are Better Than Others
As more and more people are beginning to view bitcoin as the world’s pristine collateral, more services that enable borrowing against bitcoin are coming to market.
One of the most popular services of this kind is Ledn, which has has established itself as one of the most trustworthy of such services.
This week, I published a piece on the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Ledn, Mauricio Bi Bartolemeo, to learn more about the choices he and his co-founder have made to prioritize the safety of their clients’ bitcoin above all else.
Aside from Ledn’s trustworthiness, I very much admire what Di Bartolomeo and his team have done to foster financial inclusion.
Here’s an excerpt from the piece on that topic:
“One of the primary ways in which Ledn differs from traditional borrowing and lending platforms is that its rates don’t differ based on the jurisdiction in which the lender or borrower is located.
“This makes people feel very empowered because they know that whether they're in Madrid or Medellín, they're getting the same rate,” said Di Bartolomeo.
And Di Bartolomeo smiled from ear to ear as he discussed this point, as it seemed to remind him of why he got involved with Bitcoin in the first place.
“This is one of the things that makes me proudest about this business,” he said.
“We have people back in Latin America who've come to us to say we are the first loan they've ever been approved for. This is because all we look at is ‘Did you complete KYC?’; ‘Are you a compliant citizen?’; ‘Do you have Bitcoin?,’” he added.
“It's not ‘Where do you live?’; ‘Who are your parents?’; What’s your skin color?’ I love this aspect of Bitcoin and what we do.”
If you’d like to learn more about Ledn, you can listen to my X Space conversation with Di Bartolomeo via the link below:
On the flip side, I’d very much urge you to reconsider using a DeFi lending protocol like THORChain Lending to take a loan against your bitcoin.
When you use this service, they sell your bitcoin for THORChain native token, RUNE, as part of their process of building an algorithmic stablecoin that they offer to those who borrow via the service.
I wrote about why this is dangerous in the following piece:
Are Democrats Warming Up To Bitcoin?
Prominent Democrat Van Jones share at The New York Times DealBook Summit that Democrats shouldn’t have ignored the crypto voter in the previous election cycle.
I wrote a piece on how I agree with him and also about how Democrats will need to do more than just offer lip service if they’re to win over Bitcoin and crypto voters in the next election cycle.
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The Trezor Safe 3 Bitcoin wallet is a great way to take custody of your Bitcoin.
The Home Bitcoin Mining Movement Is Hitting Its Stride
Instead of buying bitcoin, you could always mine it from your home.
In the following piece, I wrote about how this is becoming more popular and how over 5,500 open-source developers from around the world have been putting their heads together to make this easier to do.
Markets
This week, I published the following piece:
As you can imagine, I got some shit for it.
Bitcoin has been in a bull market for 26 months now. It’s price is up 600% since November 2022.
History shows that bitcoin bull markets don’t last forever.
While this time could be different, and I think bitcoin’s price will likely increase throughout at least a portion of this year, I don’t think we just skyrocket higher forever from here without significant bear markets.
I discussed the dynamics of past cycles/bear markets in the piece above, and I suggest that you read it if you want to learn more.
If you don’t read it, please know that I didn’t advocate for selling your bitcoin, nor did I say that we’d hit a cycle top or suggest that people should stop DCAing into bitcoin if that’s their preferred strategy.
If you’d like to learn more about why I wrote the piece, you can scroll through my responses to the comments in this X post:
With all of that said, please remember that you’re free to do whatever you’d like to do with your bitcoin investment. Nothing that I share in this newsletter should be taken as financial advice. Your investment decisions are yours and yours alone.
If you’ve found anything in this edition of the newsletter helpful, please feel free to leave a tip via Bitcoin’s Lightning Network here:
Thanks for reading, and here’s to a great week ahead!
Best,
Frank
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It's exciting to see someone has already implemented this idea of providing access to loans through Bitcoin, removing barriers like location, credit history, and social biases. As someone deeply interested in Bitcoin and its potential to empower underserved communities, this resonates with me on a personal level.I recently wrote an article about how Bitcoin microloans, accessed via USSD, could transform the lives of Kenyan tea farmers by giving them affordable credit through basic mobile phones without needing the internet. Seeing such concepts being implemented globally makes me believe that what I envisioned is not just a dream but something that can actually happen. It's inspiring to see how Bitcoin can bridge financial gaps and empower people worldwide, including in rural areas like those in Kenya.