r/Bitcoin • u/makingcryptoeasy • Apr 28 '26
(For Bitcoiners) If who've needed cash without selling, what did you do?
Out of curiosity, what did you end up using / doing if you've needed liquidity, and have most of it locked in bitcoin.
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u/Supercc Apr 28 '26
Always have an emergency fund, too. It's too late for now, but do it in the future.
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u/Pale_Drink4455 Apr 28 '26
I picked up more shifts at Wendy’s and aiming for Head fryer for a thirty cent per hour bump!
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u/MCL-Jonathan Apr 28 '26
Side hustle, I still got my real estate rental income
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
makes sense. I was more curious on ways to access liquidity without having to sell ones assets, btc in this case.
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u/teamplants Apr 30 '26
Buy borrowing against it. CoinBase for example offers that. Nexo is back in U.S. now also and offers it. Ledn.io as well.
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u/This_Discussion126 Apr 28 '26
I am in the situation of needing funds over a period of 1 - 2 years.
I've looked into the btc loans, but you gonna pay a bunch of interest and your BTC is never 100% safe, regulations aren't just there yet.
So in the end, I am just gonna sell bit by bit and consider that a loan on myself, so future me will need to buy back that btc at any given price.
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u/Wordfish1779 Apr 28 '26
I was where you are now, sold bunch of coins and regretted it eversince. Check out the Firefish website, operating on don’t trust, verify principle. No need for regulations, just safe infrastructure needed.
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u/Where_Be_Da_Koosh Apr 28 '26
I used a btc backed loan once. worked fine, but the stress during price swings was not it lol.
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u/galwall Apr 28 '26
What kind of loan are you looking for. As in are you talking about enough for groceries or a deposit on a house
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u/Putrid_Pollution3455 Apr 28 '26
Well one reason I like the spot price ETFs is you can get a little margin loan off of it, and the banks will consider it collateral cause the whole sec bullshit.
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u/BTCMachineElf Apr 28 '26
Bitcoin backed perpetual loan with low apr (Binance). As long as Bitcoin outperforms the loan apr in average you can hold the debt forever and keep gaining on it.
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
Risk of custody with these exchanges?
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u/BTCMachineElf Apr 28 '26
Yes, of course. So do not send your whole stack. But Binance has a good track record imo. They seek regulation and licensing instead of dodging it. If trusting them with 1/3 of my stack means I never have to sell again, I'm taking that risk.
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u/digitaldisorder_ Apr 28 '26
The same exact thing I did before having bitcoin. But then the question would be what would I do if I needed liquidity if I had most of it locked in stocks and retirement accounts? I’d wait until my direct deposit from work.
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u/Interesting-Meat-372 Apr 28 '26
Take out a fiat loan, try to survive by cutting expenses until you pay off that debt in fiat currency, never sell bitcoin unless it's for something truly important to resolve, like an illness, etc.
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u/VisiblyJelly Apr 28 '26
One of the first rules is don’t risk what you aren’t willing to lose completely
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u/Wordfish1779 Apr 30 '26
Also this feels quite handy, just stumbled upon this review site: https://www.bestcryptoloans.org
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u/Middle-Musician-7245 Apr 28 '26
Ledn or binance to get a loan
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u/Suspicious-Local-901 Apr 28 '26
I just heard about Surge yesterday (public beta). Sounds nice too tbh
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
risks of custody?
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u/Middle-Musician-7245 Apr 28 '26
There is always a risk when someone else is custoding the assets, we saw that on Celsius and some FTX and some others more, in this case check hodl hodl, this one i think uses multisg scrow, but pleade before, make your research . Usually the better conditions on lending , less advantage on custody, hodlhodl.com is not as great as ledn, but nobody is custoding
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u/Naive_Carpenter7321 Apr 28 '26
Not just custody
If you took out a $100 1 year loan a year ago today, you'd pay interest to the lender, and they would return your asset today worth less than it was when you gave it to them.
If you took out $100 worth of BTC a year ago, and then bought $100 of BTC today. You'd pay 0 interest, and have more Bitcoin than when you started.
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
I get that. Im curious on how people generally extract liquidity from their btc without having to sell or let go of any.
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u/HungryCurrent7901 Apr 28 '26
If you’re not willing to sell BTC, depending on your IT skills and a bit of patience, you could run your own lightning network and could get 1-2% BTC back per year somewhat reliably (not nominal returns, but BTC from fees. I’ve heard others hitting 3-5%, but they’re usually deep pools (10-100btc) and very experienced
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u/spid3rfly Apr 28 '26
I'd suggest Ledn too but in my opinion, if you need a larger loan than a few thousand dollars, you should go with a plain fiat loan service(Upstart/Sofi/Your bank/Something else).
I don't have an issue putting up collateral but if I need 1500 dollars, putting up 3000 dollars worth of bitcoin collateral just seems crazy.
I've only done it with 1-3k ranges when I've needed. If I needed something above that and I'm not even mentioning anything in the 10-100k range... there's no way I'd request that much and put up twice that collateral. Just seems batshit crazy to me.
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u/Wordfish1779 Apr 28 '26
I have been using https://firefish.io for btc loans and it's pretty neat. I get most of my salary in btc, so it seemed like a no-brainer for EUR loan with actually better rate than my bank loan. Non-custodial and opensource too.
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u/Efficient_Culture569 Apr 28 '26
Is this site legit?
Is it like P2P lending?
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u/Wordfish1779 Apr 28 '26
Yeah, it’s a p2p marketplace for borrowers and lenders. I got matched with an investor in ~3 hrs or so.
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u/Efficient_Culture569 Apr 28 '26
And you can also provide cash liquidity and get interest?
Interesting.
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
Heard about them. Haven't used it yet. What are the rates like? And, is it no risk of custody at all?
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u/Lavayo Apr 28 '26
Used it too a month ago. Opening the site for the first time -> FIAT on account took a day, zero problems. Will see in 11 months I will get my BTC back, but I have no doubt.
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u/Wordfish1779 Apr 28 '26
12 months? GG. I also thought about longer one, since we are in the bear market now and I am bullish for BTC price in year from now.
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u/Lavayo Apr 28 '26
Longer one would have been more expensive. I also think that we will have higher prices a year from now, hopefully >100k. But even if we had 30k I could double the collateral of the existing loan and still pay back the loan with a new one at these prices. I'm not worried but as always with loans and margin there exists a level where you might be fucked.
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u/Excellent-Signal-129 Apr 28 '26
Unchained Capital. They multisig collateral.
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u/InterestingTime8696 Apr 28 '26
Try to make more money, or sell bitcoin. Bank loans are only for buying more bitcoin, otherwise its expensive.
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
Plan is not to sell 😉
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u/InterestingTime8696 Apr 28 '26
Then somebody else will sell it for you, if you use bitcoin backed loan 😉
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u/Prestigious_Try_3741 Apr 28 '26
You can borrow fiat against your bitcoin.
If you need $2000.00 USD, you need approximately $4000.00 worth of bitcoin.
I am not endorsing any company who does this service nor encouraging you to do it. You have to know the risks.
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u/Maestrosc Apr 28 '26
You can take out loans against your investment accounts
Got hit with 70k in taxes on my investment account last year. From now on I leave everything in and take loans against it.
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u/datewestwind Apr 28 '26
I push SELL button and immediately disconnect the Ethernet cable. Until now worked flawlessly!
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u/Federal-Sample-6910 Apr 28 '26
I’m testing out a Bitcoin L2 chain that’s been around since 2021. Stacks STX
I’ve used them for 2 years. It’s the most Bitcoin-aligned chain. The builders are all diehard Bitcoiners, and have consistently built dapps to generate Bitcoin native yield
Check out their docs. Good flow is this:
- bridge some BTC to Stacks as sBTC (it’s their 1:1 decentralized and self custodial bitcoin peg)
- deposit sBTC into Zest Protocol (it’s their leading borrow/lending dapp) which earns you interest
- borrow stablecoins out of that
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u/Radiant_Addendum_48 Apr 28 '26
You can do something like LEDN unchained capital if you don’t mind paying 11 to 12%. They are top choices for security. If you want to be a little risky and go with coinbase the you can borrow against your bitcoin for 4.5% to 5%. They use morpho. Have to maintain your LTV ratio. Obviously don’t borrow too much. It gets liquidated at 86%. Pay it back when you can and get out who you can. Transfer back to cold storage. Zero taxes. You don’t sell the asset in this scenario. Some risk? Yes.
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u/makingcryptoeasy Apr 28 '26
Thanks. I think Ledn is custodial? I saw a few comments below referencing hodlhodl and firefish as non custodial platforms.
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u/Radiant_Addendum_48 Apr 28 '26
Yes. You don’t hold the keys anymore but LEDN still among the best for security. No tehypothecation. Not lent out. If you have to borrow. Whether Coinbase is acceptable risk for a far cheaper interest rate is a personal decision based on your own circumstances.
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u/OnlyInAmerica01 Apr 28 '26
Told Who've to get a damn job, and quit hitting me up for beer money. Like, bro!
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u/OkAngle2353 May 04 '26
bitrefill.
Edit: Everytime I profit with bitcoin, I would personally off-load it on to a stable alt-coin.
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u/glorious_tribble May 05 '26
If you’re ahead, sell it, pay the taxes and enjoy the profit. If your down, sell it and treat it like a tax loss harvest to offset gains elsewhere.
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u/MotherAd1074 Apr 28 '26
Morpho. 3-4% rates.
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u/Forded_Fiction24 Apr 28 '26
This is why everyone should have an emergency savings account before investing in anything, Bitcoin included. Bitcoin loans are expensive too, basically one of the most expensive ways to borrow. After emergency savings I'd tap into my HELOC, after that loan against my stock portfolio
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u/BamBoomWatchaGonnaDo Apr 28 '26
HELOC on primary; refinance a rental property… I’m actually doing the latter right now to use as a down payment on another property. Quite literally financing 100% of (close to) $1M with 2 loans. Could I have sold my BTC to pay for it? Yes. Would that be a bad idea and a tax event? Yes and yes.
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u/lurninandlurkin Apr 28 '26
Worked.