Litecoin Foundation teams up with crypto lender Cred for loans service

The Litecoin Foundation today announced a "strategic partnership" with Cred, a licensed San Francisco-based crypto lending and borrowing company that has over $300 million in lending capital. Cred's given Litecoin its own earning platform, and it promises up to 10 percent per year in interest for any funds staked.

Funds can be withdrawn at any point, and interest is paid monthly, Dan Schatt, co-founder and president of Cred, told Decrypt. The 10 percent figure is based on the original amount staked: Pledge $100 of Litecoin, and even if the value of that sum rises to $1,000 in six months, you’ll still get $10 worth of interest. The reverse is also true: should Litecoin drop to zilch, you’ll still get your $10.

Both firms stand to make money on the deal. Cred makes money by loaning out Litecoin at an even higher interest rate, and pockets the difference, minus a cut it gives to the Litecoin Foundation. 

Schatt said that his company has built the system and handled all the fine details, including legal compliance, regulatory support, and operational and customer service support. “But really, this is Litecoin’s application, and the proceeds of the application are used to support the Litecoin Foundation,” he said. The money that the Litecoin Foundation makes from the service will be spent on things like development and education.

Schatt thinks that there’s worth in building its product directly into the Litecoin Foundation’s wallet. He’s formerly of PayPal, a company that made its fortune helping other companies integrate payments plugins into their services. That’s all the more important in a nascent industry like crypto, where companies often aren’t skilled at building their own lending and borrowing applications, missing out on a potential stream of revenue, said Schatt. 

While Schatt doesn’t view Litecoin as a store of value comparable to Bitcoin, he said he sees worth in the coin for its transactions. Litecoin is, well, “lighter,” said Schatt, and it is “leverageable for a lot of transaction-oriented services.”

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And Schatt believes Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, shares the same vision for Litecoin: He “sees the value of building a technology that we think will ultimately take over [...] some of the core transaction capabilities that legacy financial rails dominate today,” he said. 

Schatt, however, isn’t “betting on any one cryptocurrency.” Instead, he is hoping that his products can improve the entire industry. ”Traditional banks are not supporting crypto companies,” he said. Cred’s collateral agents and custody partners include Ledger, Xap, Bittrex and BitGo. It also has partnerships with Bitcoin.com, Bitbuy, and Uphold. Last year, it launched CredEarn, a similar service, on Uphold.