To allow users to borrow against their holdings, digital currency wallet and exchange company Blockchain.com unveiled a “Borrow” Service. The offering will provide loans in stablecoins that are denominated in U.S. dollars against bitcoin holdings kept in the Blockchain Wallet, Coindesk reported.
Blockchain Co-Founder and CEO Peter Smith said per the report, “Institutional and retail investors have the same financial goals — grow wealth and manage risks — but the tools at their disposal are vastly different.”
Smith continued, “Now, with our suite of trading products and Borrow, retail users can trade like the big guys without selling the crypto they’ve stockpiled or leaving their Wallet.”
Loans are reportedly available right after collateral is made available, and they are acessible to wallet holders around the globe. The offering occurs following Blockchain’s opening of an institutional lending desk last summer.
Lending has become a quickly growing area in the digital currency sector. Binance, in one case, has rolled out similar services.
The news comes after Valar Ventures lent a hand in a $30 million second round of financing for digital currency trading and lending platform BlockFi. The New Jersey-based company will use the money to begin work on additional projects and bolster staff.
Co-Founder Zac Prince said that this year would be all about working on reaching people who didn’t already use digital currency, going for “more mainstream” acceptance.
The firm has about $650 million in assets and said other backers aside from Valar included Avon Ventures, Winklevoss Capital and Morgan Creek Digital.
BlockFi caught people’s attention last year when it started providing interest-bearing accounts for offering returns paid out in Ether or Bitcoin.
In 2019, BlockFi announced that it had notched $18.3 million in a series A funding round led by Valar Ventures. Winklevoss Capital, ConsenSys Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Avon Ventures, Susquehanna, CMT Digital, Akuna Capital, Morgan Creek and PJC also participated in the round.
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