forbes.com
As capital floods into the premier non-sovereign store of value, new metas and market structures are forming in real time. Led by high-profile moves from companies like Strategy—and now echoed by a new wave of corporate acquisition vehicles—bitcoin is no longer just a bet on the future. It’s fast becoming a foundational layer in today’s capital markets.
But this isn’t just about balance sheet accumulation. A paradigm shift is underway: bitcoin is evolving from a passive store of value to productive financial infrastructure. ETFs have opened the floodgates to a broader class of allocators. Liquidity is surging. And perhaps most critically, long-term holders are no longer content to sit still. They’re putting their bitcoin to work—without selling it.
That’s where lending markets come in. The bitcoin lending market has matured to such an extent that it has influenced the conventional thinking around digital assets as a whole. Given its solid track record of impressive value appreciation, investors have proven that bitcoin is a reserve asset you don't want to sell – you're better off borrowing against it.
In the face of currency devaluation and shifting market dynamics, bitcoin is the obvious choice as a store of appreciating value. Take mortgages: you can borrow against your bitcoin, buy a house, make your loan payments, and your underlying bitcoin continues to increase in value. This is happening more frequently as we see a growing class of bitcoin-wealthy individuals, entrepreneurs who've built their wealth outside traditional finance's paycheck-to-paycheck worldview.
Around 30% of Ledn’s large loans are going toward real estate – whether that be buying property itself, or doing renovations. This is bitcoin being used as productive capital. (disclaimer: author is the co-founder and CSO at Ledn).
A significant portion of leveraged bitcoin goes to entrepreneurs who are essentially running their businesses on a bitcoin standard. They get paid in bitcoin, they think in bitcoin, but they need dollars for expenses. Or they’re using bitcoin-backed loans to finance new ventures without selling their stack.
Companies have also caught on that their capital is more wisely invested in bitcoin than almost anywhere else. Increasingly, this activity comes from publicly traded companies that don’t have MicroStrategy’s ability to tap public debt markets coming to us for liquidity. It should be emphasized that these aren't crypto companies – they're traditional businesses, banks and large corporate treasuries, who realize that leveraging their bitcoin holdings is the best way to obtain working capital as opposed to just accumulating.
The Awakening of Acquisition
To paint the picture, these institutions could pledge $200 million in bitcoin to draw $100 million in liquidity through their lending provider. After sitting on the sidelines for years, they increasingly want bitcoin exposure. But more importantly, they understand how good bitcoin is as collateral. It's liquid 24/7, transparently priced, and programmatically manageable.
The repeal of SAB 121, a now-repealed SEC rule that restricted how banks and companies could hold crypto assets like bitcoin on behalf of clients, by forcing them to list them as liabilities on their balance sheets. This, and future policy shifts are going to accelerate the rate of bigger players entering the market, and without accounting headaches, rates are going to compress. Currently they’re in the low-to-mid double digits, but I expect that to come down significantly in the coming months and years.
In 2021, MicroStrategy redefined corporate bitcoin strategy. In 2025, everyone wants to be Strategy, but few understand why it worked. Companies are launching bitcoin acquisition vehicles left and right, raising capital specifically to buy bitcoin and hoping the market rewards them with multiple expansion.
But here’s the thing, a lot of these companies don’t necessarily believe in Bitcoin. They see MicroStrategy's playbook and think if they buy bitcoin, they will see those multiples on their net assets too. Others appear to be chasing bitcoin headlines in hopes of salvaging waning relevance — a risky strategy if unaccompanied by fundamentals...
This will inevitably change over time. Eventually, the market won't give out that same bump in stock price just for announcing a bitcoin purchase. Companies will be expected to hold bitcoin with their extra cash. Those wanting headlines will have to go further out on the risk curve to get attention, and that rarely ends well.
The difference between sustainable growth and speculation comes down to fundamentals. Strategy lived up to their name and actually had one, maintained strong operations, and crucially, they understood what they owned. The companies that will thrive are those that combine bitcoin holdings with solid business fundamentals, responsible leverage, and the trust that comes from transparency. Without these foundations, you're just another company chasing headlines.
Beyond the Four-Year Cycle
People always ask about bitcoin's four-year cycle – will institutional adoption change it? Bitcoin has cycles that coincide with mining reward halvings, but they also coincide with global liquidity cycles, U.S. presidential cycles, and other macro factors. Correlation isn’t causation.
Bitcoin dances to the beat of global liquidity, especially as it becomes more institutionalized. It will always be susceptible to monetary flows and macro liquidity cycles. That's a feature of any asset that's integrated into global financial markets.
When you look at CeFi (centralized finance) lending markets, we're recovering from the 2021-2022 collapses. But the composition is different. Back then, it was mostly stablecoins as people chased yield in a zero-rate environment. Now, with Treasuries offering real yields, a lot of that volume has migrated to DeFi or disappeared entirely.
What's left in CeFi is mostly bitcoin-backed lending. And here's the key: the survivors were those who focused on collateralized lending. Companies like Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager that did uncollateralized lending and rehypothecated collateral? They're gone.
Building the Future
We're finally getting to the point where institutions understand the long-term nature of investing in bitcoin. This means they're increasingly willing to offer longer terms, like multiple year rate visibility instead of just one year. That makes products better and more predictable for borrowers.
The entire market is maturing. When you combine CeFi and DeFi volumes, we're approaching 2021 highs, but with a much healthier composition. Formerly it consisted much more of uncollateralized lending for speculation. Now, it's collateralized lending to productive users.
Most people who truly understand bitcoin would prefer to hold spot, because there's so much you can do with it. But many investment vehicles don't allow direct bitcoin holdings, so they settle for these acquisition vehicles as a wrapper. It's not ideal, although it does bring more capital into the ecosystem.
The future I see is one where bitcoin-backed lending becomes as normal as home equity loans, but available globally at competitive rates. Where entrepreneurs in Colombia can access the exact same financial products at the same rates as those in New York. Bitcoin works for you while you sleep, it appreciates as currency gets debased, and provides liquidity for real-world needs. Bitcoin is proving itself as being increasingly indispensable to global financial infrastructure.