Borrow against Bitcoin: best BTC loan platforms

Borrowing against Bitcoin is the most established crypto loan there is, and you have the widest choice of venue. Custodial lenders take your BTC and pay you fiat or a stablecoin, while non-custodial options lock it in a multisig or collaborative-custody arrangement where you keep a key. Because Bitcoin is the deepest, most liquid crypto market, lenders treat it as premium collateral and tend to offer their best loan-to-value terms against it.

Bitcoin's price can still swing 10–20% in a day, and that volatility is the main driver of liquidation risk on a BTC-backed loan. A conservative loan-to-value ratio — well below each platform's maximum — is the simplest defence. Custody is the other consideration: a non-custodial or collaborative-custody loan removes the risk of a lender failing with your coins, which is why many Bitcoiners prefer it for larger positions.

The right BTC loan depends on what you value most. Nexo offers the lowest entry rate at 1.90%, while YouHodler allows the highest loan-to-value at 90% — useful if you want to extract the most liquidity per coin, though a higher LTV sits closer to liquidation. You can borrow against BTC either non-custodially through a DeFi protocol — keeping your coins in a smart contract — or through a CeFi lender that takes custody but offers fiat payouts and human support.

Whichever you choose, model the position first with our loan calculator and keep a comfortable buffer below the maximum LTV. The cheapest headline rate is rarely the only thing that matters — custody model, KYC, and how the platform handles a falling market all shape the real cost of borrowing against Bitcoin.

On a custodial lender such as Nexo, the flow is account-first: you sign up, complete KYC, send your BTC to a deposit address the platform controls, and then draw a credit line in fiat or stablecoins against it — often within minutes once the deposit confirms. Your BTC now sits in the lender's custody (with a sub-custodian or its own wallets), and you repay on a flexible, open-ended line. Speed and simplicity are the appeal; the cost is that you no longer hold the keys.

On Firefish, the flow is non-custodial and structured around a Bitcoin multisig. You and a lender are matched for a fixed term (3-24 months), your BTC is locked into an on-chain escrow that neither party can unilaterally spend, and you receive fiat from the lender. Because the collateral is enforced by Bitcoin script rather than a company's promise, there is no balance-sheet risk — but you give up the open-ended flexibility of a credit line, KYC is still required, and Firefish issues margin calls as LTV rises (its published bands escalate at roughly 73%, 79% and 86%).

Unchained sits between the two: a collaborative-custody multisig where you hold one of three keys, so your coins are never rehypothecated, paired with the service and fiat settlement of a regulated US lender. The trade-off is cost and size — rates start around 14% and the minimum loan is $150,000, which makes it a tool for high-net-worth Bitcoiners, not someone borrowing a few thousand dollars.

Work it through. Say you hold $100,000 of BTC and borrow $50,000 against it — a conservative 50% LTV. Your effective LTV is collateral-dependent: if BTC falls 30%, your $100,000 becomes $70,000 and your LTV climbs to about 71% ($50k / $70k). A 40% drop takes the collateral to $60,000 and your LTV to 83% — now brushing the liquidation threshold on most platforms. A 50% drawdown, which Bitcoin has done more than once, leaves $50,000 of collateral against a $50,000 loan: fully underwater.

Now run the same 30% drop on a 'generous' 80% LTV loan. Borrow $80,000 against $100,000 of BTC, BTC falls 30%, and your collateral is worth $70,000 against an $80,000 debt — you are liquidated long before the bottom, your BTC sold into the decline, and you keep the borrowed cash but lose the upside of every coin that was sold. This is why we treat high maximum-LTV figures as a warning label, not a selling point: the safe operating zone for a volatile asset like Bitcoin is well under 50% LTV, leaving room to survive a 40-50% drawdown without a forced sale.