Don’t Sell Crypto — Borrow BTC Against It (How Crypto Loans Work)

Indexed: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Hey, good to see you. So, over the past few years, I've built kind of a routine around this, finding crypto platforms that are actually worth paying attention [music] to, and seeing what survives real use versus what just looks good on paper. And for a while now, the thing I've been most focused on is a specific model, using crypto as collateral to borrow [music] against it. Not trading it, not selling it, borrowing against it. There's one platform I've been running consistently for about a few weeks, and today I'm going to break down what the collateral model is, >> [music] >> how it changes the way about liquidity, and what separates it from just working on a regular exchange. And at the end, I'll share what I personally go through before trusting any new platform with real assets, because the fake ones have gotten genuinely difficult to spot lately. So, um this calculator is the starting point. [music] Everything gets configured from this single screen. First thing I'm doing is selecting the asset I want to put up as collateral. And straight away, one thing worth noting, the asset selection here is broad, and it's [music] the right kind of broad, assets that actually carry volume in the market, not obscure tokens that nobody's trading. And practically, I can work with assets I'm already holding without needing to restructure anything first. And if the market starts moving in a direction I didn't expect, I have enough options to respond without being stuck. Okay, next I'm setting the collateral amount. Yeah, that's the number. And next up, the asset I want to receive as the loan. I'm choosing BTC. Then I'm setting the term, how long I actually need this thing [music] running. And then there's LTV.

[00:01:29]Um what it's measuring is the relationship between the loan amount and the collateral backing it. Each asset has a ceiling on how far that ratio can go. And the thing to understand is if the collateral value drops far enough, the position gets liquidated automatically. No warning, no grace period. [music] So, when I'm landing on this number, I'm thinking about a few things simultaneously. How much this asset has moved recently, [music] where I think volatility is headed, and how much distance I want to keep my position from that liquidation threshold. All right, I click proceed and we're on the next screen. First thing I do here, save the contract ID. That's my access point back into this specific loan, and I'll come back to that. The platform is now sitting there waiting on a transaction from my side to lock in the collateral.

[00:02:11]There's a wallet connect option that handles this automatically, but I want to do it manually, so every step is visible. Give me just [music] a moment here.

[00:02:30]Okay, that's through. Transaction's on the network. Platform will pick it up once it confirms.

[00:02:38]All right, confirmation's in. Loan is approved. So, this screen is laying up the full contract, every term, every figure. [music] Okay, next I add my receiving address where BTC is actually being sent to.

[00:02:55]Okay, confirmed. Now I'm waiting on the tokens to land.

[00:03:14]Good, balance updated. Tokens are in.

[00:03:17]The platform has executed its side cleanly, and um this screen I'm on right now, this is actually where the real work lives. This is the dashboard I come back to using that contract ID I saved earlier. Everything related to managing this loan, tracking it, adjusting it, responding to market movement, all of that happens from right here. It's not passive once it's set up, this is the operational side of it. Okay, um so now I want to step back for a second and explain what's going on here structurally, because I think when most people hear collateral lending, they either don't know what it means or they assume it's more complicated than it is.

[00:03:51]It's not. [music] And the moment it clicks, it changes how you look at the assets you're holding. So, the structure is this. I put tokens into the contract [music] as collateral. They sit there locked in, secured by the terms of the agreement, and the platform releases a loan in a different asset against that value. And here's the part that actually matters. The original [music] tokens don't move. I haven't sold anything. I haven't reduced my position. I'm still fully exposed to wherever that asset goes from here. [music] The contract holds both sides in place. And when I close out the loan and repay, the collateral [music] comes back. Um now think about what the alternative looks like. I go to an exchange, I sell, I get whatever the market price is in that moment, and that position is gone. Any upside that comes after that has nothing to do [music] with me. Here, I access the liquidity I need, and I stay in the trade. Um that's not a small distinction. That's a completely different way of extracting value from a [music] long-term holding without giving it up. So, um 5 months on this platform, somewhere around 50 operations across most of the supported asset pairs at different points in the market cycle, good conditions and rough ones, and every single one completed exactly the way it was supposed to. No failed operations, no behavior that didn't match what the interface [music] said was going to happen, nothing that gave me a reason to pause. Um and the reason I weight that track record the way I do is pretty simple. One clean transaction is noise. 10 is a decent sign. 50 spread across different assets and different market conditions is actually a signal.

[00:05:22]That's the threshold I needed to reach before I was comfortable talking about this publicly.