Borrowing against your bitcoin is a big decision, and lender marketing doesn't make it easy to compare real costs. Here's exactly how we keep our numbers honest.
Every day, our monitoring system visits each lender's published rate and terms pages and compares what it finds against our database. When something looks different — a rate change, a new fee, a collateral change — it gets flagged. Any meaningful change is reviewed against the lender's official source before our numbers update.
Lenders quote rates in inconsistent ways. Some advertise a base interest rate and add an origination or admin fee on top. Others quote an APR with fees already included. Comparing those headline numbers directly would make the fee-hiding lenders look cheaper than they are.
So our comparison table headlines the effective APR — the rate with disclosed fees included — for every lender. Where a lender's base rate differs from their APR, we show both. That's the same standard mortgage comparisons use, and it's the closest thing to an apples-to-apples number this industry allows.
Not all data can be equally certain, and we'd rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. You'll see these labels on our lender pages:
✓ Verified from official source — the number comes straight from the lender's own published pages or disclosures.
From official pages with variable pricing — the source is official, but pricing moves (for example, rates set by a live lending market), so treat the number as a recent snapshot.
Marketplace ranges observed — for peer-to-peer platforms where individual lenders set their own terms, we report the range we've seen rather than a quoted rate.
Every lender page also shows the date we last verified its terms. If a date looks stale, the lender's site is the source of truth.
BitClarity is an independent data publisher, not a lender or broker. We do not take loan applications, transmit financial credentials, or sell personal information to lenders.
We may earn referral fees when you apply for a loan through links on this site. Two commitments on that: referral relationships never affect our data — rates, rankings, and sort order come from the numbers alone — and we track every major lender whether or not they pay us anything.
We're a research tool, not a financial advisor. Always confirm terms directly with a lender before applying, and never borrow more against your bitcoin than you can afford to see liquidated.
For loans and lines of credit we publish a Safety Grade (out of 10), computed by formula from each lender's own disclosures — never a paid placement or a hand-picked editorial opinion. It's an absolute grade against fixed thresholds, so adding a new lender doesn't shuffle everyone else's number.
The grade deliberately measures one thing: structural safety. Two components: counterparty safety (60% — the custody model, with self-custody and multisig ranking highest, plus proof-of-reserves, no-rehypothecation, segregated collateral, a qualified custodian, and platform track record; disclosed insurance on custodied collateral and lending licensure also earn credit, weighted below the structural protections because policies and licenses help but structure is what actually protected borrowers in 2022) and liquidation safety (40% — how far bitcoin can fall at max borrow before your collateral is liquidated, plus what happens at the threshold: a documented cure window, partial liquidation, or conversion to stablecoins earns credit, while hair-trigger rules where a momentary price touch forfeits collateral are penalized). Every insurance, licensing, and mechanics fact is verified against the lender's own disclosures with a source on record.
What's deliberately not in it: cost isn't, because the APR column already shows it and folding price into a safety number lets a cheap loan look "safer" than it is. Personal factors like minimum loan size, KYC, geography, and accepted collateral aren't either — those aren't quality, they're fit, and the comparison table's "Best for" column (which becomes a personalized fit check once you enter your numbers) handles them. Cheap, fits-me, and safe are three different questions; we keep them separate on purpose.
Why counterparty safety carries the most weight: bitcoin lending has already run this experiment. Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager all offered attractive rates, all took custody of customer assets, and all went bankrupt in 2022, taking billions in customer collateral down with them. The cheapest loan in the market is a bad deal if the lender fails while holding your bitcoin. So the score rewards the things that would have protected borrowers then: keeping your own keys, collateral that is verifiably never lent out, segregated wallets, regulated custodians, and published proof of reserves.
Why liquidation safety gets its own category: bitcoin routinely drops hard and recovers. It has seen four drawdowns deeper than 50% since 2014, and 30% pullbacks happen in most cycles, including a fall from about $60,000 to $30,000 over a few weeks in 2021. A loan at 74% LTV that liquidates at 86% only survives a 14% dip, which bitcoin can produce in a single bad week. Our top band goes to loans that can absorb a 35% fall at max borrow, because that is the kind of move bitcoin actually makes.
Where the safety facts come from: every custody and protection fact behind the score (proof of reserves, rehypothecation policy, collateral segregation, custodian status) is sourced from the lender's own published disclosures, with a source link and a verification date on record. When a lender's own pages contradict a claim, we score the weaker reading until they clear it up.
Cards are scored separately with a composite BitClarity Score. Collateralized cards use the loan rubric plus cost and access; rewards cards weigh rewards value (30%), bitcoin alignment (rewards paid in bitcoin rank above altcoin rewards, 20%), cost (annual and foreign-transaction fees, 20%), access (no subscription, stake, or asset minimum needed to earn the headline rate, 15%), and rewards quality (instant, uncapped, 15%).
In the comparison tables we show grades as a plain-language rating: Excellent (8.0+), Strong (7.0–7.9), Solid (6.0–6.9), or Fair (below 6.0). Open any row to see the exact number and the full criteria breakdown.
The grade is a starting point, not a verdict — the right product depends on your situation, which is exactly why fit is handled separately. Every product page shows the full breakdown so you can see how the number was built.
If a number here doesn't match what a lender is actually offering, we genuinely want to know — corrections make this resource better for everyone. Flag it and we'll re-verify against the source.