Fintech startup Aave has announced that its crypto lending platform ETHLend will now accept Bitcoin and users can use the digital asset as collateral to borrow funds.
The users of the platform can now use BTC, ETH, and ETHLend’s native token LEND, along with a range of ERC-20 tokens as collateral.
Commenting on this development, Aave’s founder and CEO Stani Kulechov said: “Economically, the introduction of Bitcoin to the marketplace is a momentous development in the crypto-lending industry as the Bitcoin market capitalization floats above 50 billion USD. For the first time in the short history of crypto-lending, borrowers can propose their own interest rates for Bitcoin loans in a peer-to-peer marketplace instead of relying on lender dictated markets.”
Booming Business in a Bear Market
Unlike most crypto businesses, the downturn of the crypto market showered crypto lending firms with profits. The company claims that it has generated over 20 million in revenue last year, a massive number considering the sliding prices of crypto.
“By providing Bitcoin - in a decentralized fashion - we ensure more transparency, security and competitive interest rates to the crypto lending market. The potential is enormous: we might even see a formation of a global Bitcoin lending rate due to the scale and transparency involved in ETHLend,” he added.
In November 2017, ETHLend raised 16 million via Initial Coin Offering (ICO) ).
Last month, Aave received approval for two regulatory licenses from the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). This will allow the firm to expand its services in Europe as it can now indulge in businesses including the conversion of fiat to crypto, crypto to fiat, and crypto to crypto transactions.
“ETHLend provides a service that is quite useful for the cryptocurrency holders. Now they went further by offering BTC interoperability - representing the king of all Cryptocurrencies for most people,” said Jun Gong, Co-Founder of Dapp.com.
