The $1 Trillion Bitcoin Loan Market Is Coming | Mauricio Di Bartolomeo

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (0:02)
We believe and we estimate that in not too long, five to 10 years, there's going to be a trillion dollars worth of Bitcoin back loans out there. We need to know where you're going to get a trillion dollars. There's no balance sheet in the world that can cough up a trillion dollars. We were the first company to ever do this. It is the first time S&P has ever rated a Bitcoin product, and it's the first time that it's given an investment rate rating to a Bitcoin product. This is the first true, in my opinion, Bitcoin credit instrument. There is a maturity, and there is a coupon, and there is bankruptcy remoteness.

**Danny Knowles** (0:41)
All right, Mal.
Cheers, man. Cheers, man. Good to see you.

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (0:44)
Great to see you.

**Danny Knowles** (0:44)
Thank you for coming in for this. Hey, man. My pleasure.
I've listened to you on Natalie's show, and you said, people don't wake up in the morning and think today is a good day for a loan. That's not true. About two months ago, when Bitcoin price crashed, I woke up, looked at it and went, today is a good day for a loan.

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (1:04)
That's fair. And I didn't mean that to be sort of like an absolute statement, like there are times in the market where you see something you like, an asset comes by, and you're like, that's the day. But it's usually driven because of an opportunity that lands on your lap or it's not something that, you know, you just take for the sake of having it. You take a loan to deploy it typically, right? Like most people don't borrow to keep the money. Yeah. You know, borrowed.
But that's more so what I meant. But yes, to your point, like we are in this is, I know it sounds a little bit counterintuitive to some people, but we are seeing a big pickup in first time loan, first time borrowers right now, because a lot of people feel much more comfortable borrowing at 60 versus 120

**Danny Knowles** (1:46)
Yeah.

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (1:46)
Because they're sizing the potential risk of a drawdown.

**Danny Knowles** (1:48)
I've done basically both of those. I've borrowed above 100K last year at some point, and that one had to be topped up a couple of times.

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (1:58)
And this is a good segue, which is like the price at which you borrow almost shouldn't matter because you should be planning appropriately, regardless of wherever price you're in. If you're 120 and you think we're going to 60, you want to have enough Bitcoin to withstand that. If you think we're going to 40, even from 120, you should have enough Bitcoin to withstand that. So to me, that's the biggest determinant of whether a person has a great outcome or a person gets caught off guard is how much time do you spend planning, sizing up the loan, how many diligence questions you ask. And there's like a direct correlation between the people that are diligent and plan and ask questions and do like take out the loan and they keep until they want to, and they never get liquidated. And these are the people that have great experiences. And then there's cases of times where life also happens, right? Like you may have had that budget, but something else happened and you had to use some of that budget. And then all of a sudden it caught you off guard or it caught you traveling and you didn't set up auto top up, right? Like that's happened.
And so-

**Danny Knowles** (3:09)
Didn't that happen when we were in Sydney?

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (3:12)
Which one?

**Danny Knowles** (3:13)
Did it not happen with you where you were traveling?

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (3:15)
For me? For my own loan?

**Danny Knowles** (3:17)
Yeah.

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (3:17)
Well, it's happened to me before. Like, you know, every member, I want to say, I don't know about every member, but like definitely-

**Danny Knowles** (3:25)
No, sorry, I got it totally wrong. It was happened to me while we were in Sydney together. Yes. Because I was getting the emails.

**Mauricio Di Bartolomeo** (3:31)
Oh, yeah, we were sitting having that drink.
I remember now and you're like, damn, but that happens, right? And that's why we built auto top up. And like I said, that saved me. And it saved a ton of people.
It's not a single person this year, by the way, and the statistics are 99.9, because as I mentioned in Nico's show, there's been one case of a guy that did leave auto top up on, but he had dust. And so it went to the loan, but they didn't budge the LTV much. But every single person that's used auto top up this year with a Bitcoin balance and their transaction account, none of those people have been liquidated. None of them. Auto top up adoption is up to like 40% of our loans right now. Damn. Which is, we love to see it.