After years underwriting institutional credit, we kept seeing the same pattern in crypto: people borrowing against Bitcoin without understanding what they were actually agreeing to.
In private credit, every deal gets a full credit memo. The cash flows, the covenant package, the collateral package, the management base case — all stress-tested and documented before a single dollar goes out the door. Not because of regulation. Because of basic fiduciary common sense.
Then we'd get asked about BTC loans by friends, family, people at conferences. "I'm borrowing against my Bitcoin at 12% — is that good?" And the honest answer was almost always: nobody knows. Because nobody had checked 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 either affiliate farms (they got 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.
What we built instead
Pledge applies the same analytical framework used in institutional credit to BTC lending platforms. Safety first — custody, rehypothecation, reserves, regulatory status, track record. Then rates. Because a 1% lower APR doesn't mean anything if your collateral disappears when the platform fails. Read our custody models guide for why this matters.
Every platform in the database is scored identically. No affiliate relationships affect the scores. No sponsored placements. Just the analysis. Compare platforms side by side →
If this saves one person from being the next Celsius customer — the collateral is worth it. Read our platform collapse history to understand what went wrong.