Before discovering Bitcoin (BTC), the co-founder of LEDN, Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, managed to short-tilit the Venezuelan Bolivar because he quickly lost value against the stronger American dollar. Now, with the US dollar depreciating against Bitcoin, borrowing against Bitcoin instead of selling it has become a more viable strategy.
“Before Bitcoin, my most successful investment was to short-circuit the Bolivar with dollars,” Da Bartolomeo told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview at the Consensus Conference in Toronto, Canada.
“I borrowed bolivars and bought dollars with them, holding hard dollars and obtaining a loan [position] On the weakest currency, “he said.
The arrival of bitcoin supported loans means that investors can now effectively implement the same strategy using a harder currency as guaranteed.
It was part of the motivation behind the launch of LEDN, a company based in the Cayman Islands which gives Bitcoin holders the possibility of accessing liquidity in dollars without having to sell their BTC.
By borrowing against bitcoin, “you do the same thing essentially, but you take effect the hard money, which is bitcoin, and take a borrow [position] In dollars, which is a lower currency, “said Di Bartolomeo, adding:
“This creates a virtuous cycle a bit that we see repeatedly occurring with real estate, with borrowing against your stock, borrowing against your gold, and therefore bitcoin is not different.”
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Cryptography loan market
LEDN operates in a much wider crypto loan industry that has increased in the past five years due to the rapid appreciation of Bitcoin, the arrival of institutional investors and the growing utility of stablecoins.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, the cryptography loan market was estimated at $ 30.2 billion, an increase of more than three years compared to two years earlier, according to Galaxy Research. However, the size of the global industry remains below the peak of 2021.
Researchers have awarded the recent increase in decentralized financial applications, which allow users to borrow against assets. This trend was still corroborated by a recent Cointelegraph report, which documented the growing monetary value guaranteed by the Defi loan protocols.
LEDN was classified among the three main centralized finance lenders (CEFI), with a loan book worth 9.9 billion dollars at the end of 2024. Together, the three main CEFI – LEDN, Tether and Galaxy lenders – represent 89% of the total market, according to the Galaxy report.
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