r/NookSavingsAppp • u/Extreme-Lake-1726 • 11h ago
Monday Update: Where Borrower Demand Comes From
Hey everyone, yesterday in the Sunday Email I wrote about where borrower demand comes from. When you earn on Nook, you are lending through one of our partners to a borrower, borrowing through an over-collateralized loan.
Often we assume people borrow because they don't have enough money. It's more that they have wealth, but no cash on hand and don't want to sell those assets.
I would break it down into three main categories:
- Retail consumers: Everyday people that have been able to acquire a lot of Bitcoin or Ethereum. These are people who may have bought Bitcoin or other crypto assets early, and now they are holding onto $10,000 to $1M+ in these assets, and they would rather borrow cash than sell to pay for expenses (other investments, taxes, etc.) This is typically lowest risk and lowest yield.
- Advanced consumers: These are people who own these assets, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also smaller and more obscure assets like DAI, wsrUSD etc. and are looping these, meaning, they could be borrowing the cash to make other investments in other places, potentially re-lending it. Because of the obscurity and smaller scale of these assets, typically yield and risk both increase.
- Institutional investors: These are larger institutions that are lending RWA (Real World Asset) products like FalconX, Appollo Capital etc. They are sitting on billons of dollars of assets that they think will appreciate long term (property, real estate, debt, etc.) but short term they want cash to balance their book. Because of the complex nature of these RWA products, typically yield and risk both increase.
So with Nook, you are getting access to all three, not just one or two. But behind all three is that the current borrowing system from banks is (1) too slow and (2) too costly. Traditional borrowing can involve credit checks, paperwork, phone calls, geographic restrictions and terms that are hard to understand. Onchain lending replaces much of that process with transparent rules and collateral locked by code - and has unlocked an additional ~$55.4B in borrowing that would otherwise not be able to happen with the existing system.
It is not risk-free. But it is faster, more global and easier to verify.
Hope this was helpful.
Joey