BlockFi Hands Out $20 Million in Bitcoin, Ethereum Interest Payments

By Liam Frost

Crypto lending platform BlockFi has paid its users more than $28 million in interest for January, the platform’s CEO Zac Prince announced on Twitter today.

“Another record breaking month of interest payments,” Prince tweeted, adding, “Our clients earned over 28M in interest for January including >400 btc, >4500 ETH and 5M in stable coins.”

Notably, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) made up the lion’s share of this figure as roughly 400 BTC (currently worth around $14 million) and 4,500 ETH ($6.43 million) were paid out as interest.

Founded in 2017, BlockFi is a centralized crypto lending firm—as opposed to the booming decentralized finance sector—that lends cryptocurrencies to big companies. In their turn, these crypto funds are made up of investments made by retail and high-net worth users, for which they are regularly paid interest.

“The yield comes from our lending activities. On the dollar side, we lend to both retail and institutions. On the crypto side, we lend to just institutions,” Prince previously told Decrypt.

While most Bitcoin lending firms have been seeing significant growth of assets under their management (AUM) throughout 2020, BlockFi topped them all. During the last year alone, the firm’s AUM increased by a record 1,500%—from $250 million to over $4 billion.

BlockFi has also recently submitted a registration form for a Bitcoin Trust with the SEC, which—if approved—would make it a direct competitor of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the largest of its kind at the moment.

On January 21, BlockFi also launched an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk that institutional investors can use to exchange large amounts of BTC. This method allows big players to conduct massive deals without directly affecting the global market price of an asset.

“Existing institutional clients are already using many of these BlockFi services independently, and have noted the benefits of having a one-stop destination for their digital asset trading and financing needs,” Prince said at the time.

As Decrypt reported, over 15,200 BTC (worth nearly $500 million) was transferred out of crypto exchange Coinbase Pro on Monday. This was likely a prime example of a huge OTC deal, noted some experts. And speculation is rife that it could have gone to Guggenheim’s new Bitcoin trust that was able to open that day.

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