Crypto lending firm Genesis Capital processed $1.1 billion in loans last year. This is according to the company’s recently released ‘Lending Snapshot’ for Q4 2018.

Genesis Capital

The figure shows the massive growth in processed loans as Bitcoin price fell over 44% in 2018.

The first Digital Asset Lending Snapshot was released at the end of Q3 2018. This reported that Genesis processed $553 million in loans from the period starting March 2018.

Therefore the most up-to-date figures show that “Q4 loan originations increased more than 100% in the final three months of 2018 compared to the prior six-month period.”

The company effectively doubled its business in the final months of 2018.

Loan Increases

Genesis Capital showed that its loans increased to $153 million in active loans, an increase of $20 million from Q3. This was most likely led by Bitcoin price hitting new lows in this quarter.

In fact, the most active months were November and December, two incredibly volatile months for BTC where the coin dropped from $6,350 to below $3,500 USD in a two week period. These were the months where Genesis Capital reportedly “saw new hedge funds and trading firms utilizing ‘spot’ borrow.”

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Fiat Currency Lending with Crypto Collateral

At the end of 2018, Genesis launched fiat currency lending with crypto collateral. This is a new service that has been developed in response to demand from its institutional clients. The company stated:

“Long-term digital currency investors with appreciated assets can borrow cash against their crypto holdings without triggering a taxable event.”

Bitcoin lendings made up for a majority of the company’s business, but Genesis stated that “Ethereum (ETH) borrowing more than doubled since Q3 but still only accounts for less than 10% of our loan book, well below the highs seen in Q1 and Q2.”

Bear Market

The crypto bear market has taken hold for months now. BTC has steadily declined in value over the year and currently sells for $3,493 according to CoinMarketCap. This is a far cry from this time last year when BTC price was valued at over $10,000 per coin.

Featured Image: Depositphotos © cozyta

The BitTorrent Token (BTT) sale on Binance took place yesterday. In under 15 minutes, $7.1 million was raised, selling 50 billion BTT token. Binance announced the conclusion of the sale via an official blog post on their website.

BitTorrent Token (BTT) Sale

The token sale ran in two different sessions: One for purchasing BTT with TRON (TRX) and the other purchasing BTT with Binance Coin (BNB). Both sale sessions ended quickly. This didn’t go without a hitch though.

It seems Binance wasn’t fully prepared for the amount of traffic it was going to receive and ran into major complications during the sale. During the BitTorrent Token sale, many were not able to complete transactions.

Full transparency. The issue experienced today was caused by the “user agreement confirmation” button caching/locking. Most of the stress tests focused on the buy process, this part was not covered thoroughly enough. The order of requests received was preserved.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 28, 2019

All order requests were preserved by Binance, and the transactions that were frozen should still receive their BTT in the end. After Binance had its issue, TRON came out that it would host an airdrop for BTT tokens to make up for the fluke.

I would like to explore the possibility with @binance to giveaway free $BTT to everyone on launchpad fails to get #BTT today. #BitTorrent community wants you! Not 100% guarantee. Need to figure out detail. BUT RT if you agree! @cz_binance #TRON $BNB $TRX

— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) January 28, 2019

It remains unknown at this time if there will be a BitTorrent Token Giveaway, as Binance’s CEO has yet to formally make a statement regarding Sun’s tweet. Last year, TRON purchased BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol.

In Binance’s blog post, the exchange explains BitTorrent as:

“BitTorrent is a TRON-affiliated blockchain project for peer-to-peer file sharing, empowering a new generation of content creators with the tools to distribute their content directly to others on the web. BitTorrent’s new BTT token will allow BitTorrent peers to incentivize activities that lead to better file sharing, like using faster networks and enabling longer seeding periods. BitTorrent currently has 100 million monthly active users (MAU) across 138 countries.”

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Coin Price Movements

At press time, the cryptocurrency market is rebounding after trading mostly red yesterday. Currently, Binance Coin (BNB) is still trading red at $6.25 a coin, down -4.71%. TRON (TRX) is trading at $0.0275 a coin, up 1.43% in 24 hours.

Featured Image: Twitter