Crypto Backed Loans

Get Instant Crypto Loans

Use the TOP 20 coins as collateral for crypto loans with the highest loan to value ratio (90%). Get loans in EUR, USD, CHF and GBP and withdraw instantly to credit card and personal banks.

How Crypto Backed Loans Work

Transfer crypto to your YouHodler wallet

YouHodler accepts the TOP 18 cryptocurrencies as collateral. No fees for crypto deposits or withdrawals.

2Get a crypto loan and withdraw funds

Your loan approval take seconds. No need to find a lender like in peer-to-peer (p2p) platforms. You instantly receive cash in EUR, USD, CHF, or stablecoins.

YouHodler works like a pawnshop. There is a temporary sale of cryptocurrency, where YOU are the seller and YouHodler is the buyer. Following a predefined period of time, you repurchase the cryptocurrency from YouHodler.

Our cash withdrawal options:

Bank wire withdrawal via SEPA and SWIFT. Available worldwide.

Credit card withdrawal to your MasterCard or VISA. List of available countries is here.

Crypto withdrawal: buy any crypto or stablecoins using our integrated crypto exchange.

3Get your crypto collateral back anytime

You can repay your loan using a credit card, stablecoins or bank account and get your crypto back.

4Manage your loan

Use our list of advanced features to manage your loan conditions and react to the market’s movements:

Last week, I took out a loan without meeting anyone, signing anything, or even interacting with a human being.

I also invested in a variety of assets that earn interest of up to 5.9 percent a year. I did it all on my own, from my computer. All I needed was some cryptocurrency and a knowledge of how these systems work.

The amounts were tiny: The loan was $30, and I had $95 worth of crypto earning interest. But I could've easily done the same with much larger amounts, at those exact same terms.

To do all this, I was using freely available DeFi, or decentralized finance, services based on the Ethereum blockchain. DeFi is one of the key usages of Ethereum, which, besides being a cryptocurrency, is also a decentralized app platform where most of the currently available DeFi apps reside.

DeFi, in general, encompasses financial services which are transparent, decentralized, and trustless. Instead of having to go to a bank to get a loan, provide your ID and credit score, then have a human assess your situation and decide whether you can get the money, with DeFi it's all algorithmic. A smart contract, with an open-source code available to everyone to check, handles everything. All you need is to provide some ether or ETH — the currency of Ethereum — or another crypto asset as collateral and choose what you want to do. The smart contract takes care of the rest.

Like I said, all of these services are trustless and decentralized — up to a degree. Some require you to create an account; with others, you don't even have to enter your email anywhere. Of course, rules apply: You cannot just lend thousands of dollars worth of crypto without any collateral.

Dead simple, even for a newbie

It's been possible to do this for quite a while, thanks to startups such as Maker, Compound, Nexo, and others. But the process wasn't always simple for someone who doesn't know much about Ethereum and cryptocurrencies in general.

However, a new Ethereum mobile wallet called Argent removes nearly all the friction from DeFi —literally anyone can use it with very little or no prior knowledge. Argent is currently in an invite-only beta, but it's fully functional, and everything I've done with it was real — actual cryptocurrency was moved around and locked in smart contracts that provided the functionality described above.

Let's say you're a complete newbie when it comes to cryptocurrencies. After installing Argent, which is a regular mobile app (I used the iOS version, but it's also available for Android), you have the option of adding funds via Apple Pay or Card, or a bank transfer, or you can send cryptocurrencies directly from a wallet or exchange. Going through an exchange may be cheaper, but adding funds with Apple Pay is the simpler option.

So you've bought some ETH (you can buy other coins, too, but let's stick to ETH, as it's the basis for the DeFi services covered in this text). Switch to the Finances tab, and you'll be presented with two options: One is Savings, which uses another service called Compound to invest your funds. There really isn't much more to it: You select one of the assets you own, in this case ETH, and Compound will lock it into a smart contract, which will immediately start giving you a return, calculated in real time.