pledgeBy Bitcoiners,
for Bitcoiners.
Pledge is built by an independent team of Bitcoiners with backgrounds in institutional credit. We kept getting asked “I’m borrowing against my Bitcoin at 12%, is that good?” and having to answer honestly: nobody had done the work to know. Pledge is the research we wanted to point to instead.
The same discipline. Different collateral.
In institutional credit, no deal closes without the work done first — cash flows, covenants, collateral, base case, all stress-tested before a dollar goes out. Not because of regulation. Because of basic fiduciary common sense. Bitcoin borrowers deserved the same.
The honest problem was that we couldn’t answer the question ourselves. Friends, family, people at conferences — “I’m borrowing against my Bitcoin at 12%, is that good?” Nobody could say which platform, what the custody model was, whether there was rehypothecation, what the origination fees were, or what happened if BTC dropped 40%.
The comparison sites that existed were affiliate farms — paid to recommend specific lenders — or surface-level aggregators that listed rates without analyzing safety. Neither was useful to anyone who actually understood credit risk.
So Pledge applies the same framework to 52 Bitcoin products: safety first — custody, rehypothecation, reserves, regulatory status, track record — then rates. A 1% lower APR means nothing if your collateral disappears when the platform fails.
No commercial
relationships, full stop.
The 8-factor methodology determines rank — no lender, ETF issuer, custodian, or stablecoin project can buy a position, a Pick badge, or a featured spot.
Pledge currently has no affiliate, referral, or sponsorship relationships with any lender, ETF issuer, custodian, or stablecoin project we cover. There are no paid rankings and no paid placement of any kind. Every ranking is editor-funded research — the weighted output of a public 8-factor methodology, nothing else.
If that ever changes, every monetized link will carry a clear ↗ AFFILIATE marker, and the disclosure will land on every relevant surface before the first paid link goes live — not after.
A research team. Real Bitcoin holdings, disclosed.
Pledge is an independent research team. Bitcoin holdings, lender positions, and ETF exposure are disclosed publicly and updated on a recurring cadence. If a position exists in something we rank, you see it.
Every lender agreement, ETF prospectus, custody whitepaper, and stablecoin attestation that informs a Pledge score is read end-to-end. Scores are the weighted sum of 8 public factors (see methodology v3.2). No outside writers; no ghost-written reviews.
As the team grows, this page changes — and the disclosures expand with it.
8 factors. Weighted. Public.
Every Pledge score is the weighted sum of 8 safety factors. The methodology document explains each factor, the weights, and the rubric for the 0-10 score per factor.
Read methodology v3.2 ↗Tell us within six minutes of reading the page.
Every score links to the source document and the date we read it. If a number's wrong, you should be able to prove it fast — and we should be able to fix it faster.