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In another record breaking quarter, the cryptocurrency lender issued over $1bn worth of loans and saw high international demand. Borrowing demand was driven mainly by derivatives traders looking to take advantage of future contracts' premium over spot price and miners taking cash loans against their BTC holdings to expand their operations.
As the bitcoin market approaches the block reward halving – the event during which the bitcoin block reward falls from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC – the lending desk is also seeing strong demands from Chinese miners. These miners usually do not want to let go of their bitcoin holding and, as a result, tend to collateralize bitcoins for cash loans to expand their mining facilities, Genesis Trading CEO Michael Moro told The Block. As previously reported by The Block, the current bitcoin breakeven price is hovering around $6,500 for miners. If transaction fee figures remain unchanged and bitcoin's price does not jump to around $13,000 after the halving, lenders might face greater default risks in lending to miners.
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