Earning a passive crypto income is the key driver of the crypto lending market. The yearly crypto lending volume exceeded 40 billion USD in 2019. This market is growing 25%-35% quarter to quarter. 2 Billion USD of this 40 billion USD is borrowed/lent via the DeFi – Decentral Finance – platforms.
The following key questions are analyzed in this article:
- What are the key segments of this market?
- DeFi lending overview
- How to earn passive income via DeFi?
- What’s special in SmartCredit.io?
This topic is analyzed in the following way:
- At first, you could look at our webinar presentation
- After that, the analysis of the crypto passive income will follow
Recording of the Webinar
Key use cases in the Crypto Lending
- Using loans for trading – ca 80% of the market will feed into the crypto exchanges. Traders use their collateral to get the loans because either the crypto exchanges do not support these collaterals or traders get better terms via crypto lending.
- Liquidity creation – instead of selling crypto, which in most countries would be a taxable event, the users would rather monetize their crypto assets via using them as collateral for the loans. This is approximately 10%-15% of the market.
- Crypto economy – borrowing crypto for using it in the crypto-sphere – 5% -10% of the market.
Key market segments in the Crypto Lending
There are 3 main channels for crypto lending:
- Crypto Borrowing / Lending via the Crypto Exchanges for margin trading
- Custodial Lending Platforms (Nexo, Celsius, Genesis Capital) – they control your private keys (i.e., they control your assets)
- Non-Custodial Lending Platforms (Maker, Compound, Ethlend, SmartCredit.io) – the do no control your private keys (i.e., they do not control your assets)
Crypto exchanges are the biggest player in this market. They are offering margin lending for the traders, which can leverage their positions via margin lending. For example, the trader puts down 1 Bitcoin as collateral, he borrows 3 Bitcoins against this collateral, and he has to pay daily interest for these 3 Bitcoins. This will take a long position with these 3 Bitcoins. When the market goes up, then the trader will earn a profit. However, when the market goes against his trades, the exchange will liquidate the trader’s positions.
Crypto lending market size
The estimated market size is the following.
The market size for the crypto exchanges is based on the Bitfinex lending statistics (which is publicly available); it’s circa 500 million USD loan originations at the moment. Let’s calculate with 20 biggest exchanges offering the margin borrowing/lending, let’s calculate with their active loans of 300 million USD, and let’s calculate with 4 originations per year. This would result in the 4 x 20 x 300 = 24 billion USD originations per year.
The market size for the custodial solutions is based on the self-declared numbers.
The market size for the non-custodial solutions is based on the loanscan.io statistics.
DeFi Lending overview
The key platforms in the DeFi lending are:
- Maker, which allows borrowing against your collateral without the counterparty
- Compound. finance, which is a money market fund with a variable interest rate
- Aave, which is a money market fund with a variable interest rate
- dYdX, which is a margin trading platform
- nuo, which is a margin trading platform
- bZx, which is a margin trading platform
Here is an overview of total lending volume via DeFi (the screenshot was taken on 17.06.2020, via loanscan.io )
Here is an overview of outstanding loans in the DeFi protocols (the screenshot was taken on 17.06.2020, via loanscan.io )
The key in these DeFi platforms is that the KYC is not required, and the user can directly execute lending and borrowing transactions. These platforms are practically user interfaces, which offer access to smart contracts.
The missing KYC might be one of the handicaps here – the AML law states that from a certain size of transactions (in EU, for example, 15’000 EUR), one needs to identify the counterparty. The DeFi platforms share the standpoint that they do not need to do the KYC on the counterparties. That’s a valid point of view for the platform providers; however, this approach delegates the identification liability to the platform users. These users don’t have any means to identify their counterparties …
How to earn passive crypto income in DeFi?
In the case of the money market funds, it works as follows:
- User needs to deposit his funds into the DeFi protocol (for example, Compound or Aave) and receives money market fund tokens – in the case of Compound, the “cTokens“
- The borrowers borrow directly from this money market fund. The interest rate is not market-driven, but it’s based on a linear formula, see more in the Compound. finance review and Crypto Fixed Income
- The interest is accumulated in the user’s money market fund tokens
- Users can withdraw any time his funds by converting their money market fund tokens into underlying assets. However, there are some side-effects to be considered; see more in the Compound. finance review and Crypto Fixed Income. Users can only withdraw their funds when there is enough liquidity in the protocol. The reason is the maturity mismatch in these protocols. In traditional finance, one needs to match borrowers’ and lender’s durations. However, in the Compound platform, the borrowers have unlimited loan durations, and the lenders have daily durations. If the borrowers are not paying back their loans, then the lenders cannot withdraw.
In the case of margin trading platforms, it works very similarly:
- The user needs to deposit his funds into the DeFi protocol (for example, dYdX, nuo, or bZx)
- The borrowers borrow for leveraged trading from this money market fund
- The interest accumulates in the lender’s tokens
- User can withdraw any time their funds
Both money market funds and margin trading platforms are utilizing very similar concepts.
Earn BTC interest with the DeFi (Decentral Finance)
The third way to earn Bitcoin interest is via the DeFi. DeFi is based on the Ethereum, however, there is WBTC – wrapped BTC – which is mapping the Bitcoins into the Ethereum network. The beauty of WBTC is that it’s an ERC20 token, which makes it easily usable in the DeFi infrastructure.
How could one get WBTC? The user would need to convert his BTC via the WBTC partners and the users would receive WBTC ERC20 tokens that he could then lend via the crypto platforms.
In the case of custodial lending or in case of exchange-based margin lending, the user doesn’t control his asset – it’s the platform provider who will control the asset. The users are transacting on these platforms with IOU’s (I Owe You). If the user is using the WBTC in the DeFi platforms then it’s the user’s asset – there is no intermediary platform controlling the asset.
SmartCredit.io will add WBTC as an underlying for lending and as collateral. The lenders will be available to monetize their WBTC’s without losing control over them.
Passive crypto income and SmartCredit.io – How does it work?
SmartCredit.io offers crypto loans beginning from 7-day loans. The current version is based on active lending, where the lenders will actively accept the loan requests. The next version of SmartCredit.io will contain automated acceptance – active participation of the lenders is not required.
The key advantages of SmartCredit.io are:
- Low collateral ratios for the borrowers – all DeFi systems and most custodial lending systems have very high collateral ratios. See more in the Why is collateral ratio so high in DeFi? This means that borrowers can borrow little against their collateral assets. In SmartCredit.io, borrowers can borrow 2x – 3x more on their asset basis.
- Personal Fixed Income Funds for passive investors – they will earn passive income on their funds, and these funds are in the investor’s name (not pooled with others)
The key difference to the DeFi platforms is that while DeFi platforms focus on the money market fund business models (for borrowing or margin trading), SmartCredit.io focuses on the real crypto fixed income markets. And it’s done with the focus on the borrowers, which are the key driver of this market. The market has more supply than demand – the lenders follow the borrowers and earn passive crypto income.
Our Webinar Series
We started with the regular webinar series focusing on the Blockchain, crypto lending, and coronavirus economic crisis.
- On the 29th of March, the first webinar was on the topic “Coronavirus and Bitcoin price – What’s next” (only blog article, we did not record it …)
- On the 5th of April, the second webinar was on the topic “Coronavirus market crisis – Where to invest 5’000 $. “
- On the 12th of April, the third webinar was on the topic “Coronavirus crash versus 2008 financial crash – What is the difference?“
- On the 19th of April, the fourth webinar was on the topic “Why is the central bank interest rate so low and Why is it so high for the SME’s?“
- On the 26th of April, the fifth webinar was on the topic “What will happen to Bitcoin (Looming Financial Crisis) ?“
- On the 3rd of May, the sixth webinar was on the topic “Fiat currency versus Bitcoin. Why Bitcoin’s future is so bright?“
- On the 10th of May, the seventh webinar was on the topic “Are Crypto Lending Platforms Safe?
- On the 18th of May, the eighth webinar is this one here: “How will Bitcoin halving impact Bitcoin Price and Crypto Markets?“
Additional information
For more information, check out the related articles from the SmartCredit.io blog:
Top Crypto Lending Platforms for Fixed Income (Guide)
Why Borrowers need Low Collateral Ratio?
Blockchain-based financial system – Are we ready?
Why is Collateral Ratio so high in Defi?
Can the DeFi scale to real finance? What is missing?
Why DeFi liquidity pooling has regulatory risk? What is the alternative?
Risk analysis of crypto lending platforms
Why is DAI interest rate 10% in Defi
SmartCredit.io YouTube Channel
Telegram: https://t.me/SmartCredit_Community
Twitter: https://twitter.com/smartcredit_io
Please note, this is not financial advice. Therefore, you should always consult with your financial advisor before you make investment decisions.
