A 6-to-1 gap between openness and action
In February 2026, the research firm Protocol Theory surveyed 1,244 cryptocurrency holders across the United States and Australia on behalf of Ledn, the Bitcoin-backed lender. Two numbers from that survey deserve to be read side by side: 88% of respondents said they would consider using a loan or credit product to fund at least one planned purchase or investment. Only 14% currently use a crypto-backed loan.
Source: Ledn / Protocol Theory survey of 1,244 crypto holders aged 18+, US and Australia, February 19–24, 2026.
The report calls this the “crypto collateral gap” — a 6-to-1 distance between stated openness and actual usage. I have worked in the Bitcoin industry for most of a decade, and I have heard the borrowing-without-selling pitch made a hundred times. What I had not seen before this report is the gap between interest and adoption quantified this cleanly, on a decent sample, across two markets.
This article is my reading of what the data says, where it should be taken with a grain of salt, and what it means if you hold crypto and have ever considered borrowing against it.
What this research is — and who paid for it
First, the shape of the evidence. The study was a device-agnostic online survey of 1,244 cryptocurrency holders aged 18 and over — 621 in the United States, 623 in Australia — fielded between February 19 and 24, 2026, designed and analysed by Protocol Theory, a consumer-research firm focused on digital markets. The full report, The Crypto Borrowing Gap, was published in April 2026.
Disclosure, because it matters: the research was commissioned by Ledn — a lending platform that Best Crypto Loans independently reviews. Neither Ledn nor anyone else paid for, or had input into, this article. Commissioned research is not automatically bad research, but it deserves proportionate skepticism, so I have cross-checked the report's market-context claims against independent data (Galaxy Research, below) and I flag where the survey's framing favors its sponsor.
My read: the 88% figure is softer than it looks. “Would consider” costs a survey respondent nothing, and consideration questions reliably overstate real intent. But even if you discount it heavily — call genuine intent half, or a third, of stated consideration — the distance to 14% actual adoption remains enormous. The direction of the finding survives any reasonable discount. That is what makes it worth writing about.
Borrowing against what you own is normal — crypto skipped it
In traditional finance, borrowing against long-term assets is unremarkable. Homeowners borrow against property. Investors borrow against securities portfolios. Businesses borrow against receivables. The logic is always the same: keep the asset, access the liquidity.
Crypto holders, the survey suggests, already think this way: 72% agree that crypto-backed loans provide convenient access to funds without needing to sell crypto. The behavioural template is familiar; only the collateral is new.
Yet the market remains small relative to the asset class. Crypto-collateralized lending reached $73.6 billion at the end of Q3 2025 — an all-time high, finally surpassing the $69.4 billion peak of late 2021, according to Galaxy Research's State of Crypto Leverage report. Against a global crypto market capitalization of roughly $2.68 trillion (CoinGecko, as cited in the Ledn report), outstanding crypto-backed borrowing amounts to under 3% of the asset class. Homeowners would not recognize that ratio.
There is one structural detail worth adding, because it separates this cycle from the last one. Galaxy's data shows the majority of today's lending happens onchain, overcollateralized and transparent — a very different market from the opaque, under-collateralized credit that defined 2021. The lending market that is setting records now is, structurally, a more honest one. That matters for the trust question this survey keeps circling.
Why do so few crypto holders actually borrow?
The report's central claim — and I think its most useful one — is that the gap is not a comprehension problem. Crypto holders broadly understand what borrowing against collateral means and why it might be useful. The barriers that keep them from acting are practical and confidence-shaped.
Among the 1,069 respondents who do not currently use a crypto-backed loan, the most commonly cited barriers, in order, were:
Relative ranking as published in the report (n=1,069 non-borrowers); exact percentages were not disclosed. Source: Ledn / Protocol Theory, 2026.
Notice what sits at the bottom of that list: “limited understanding.” The thing platforms spend the most effort explaining is the thing that least needs explaining. The report's executive summary adds a further wrinkle — it elevates interest-rate transparency into the top tier of barriers alongside liquidation risk and regulation. Read together, the two lists say something coherent: prospective borrowers are unsure what borrowing will really cost them, and unsure what happens to their collateral when the market moves. Cost clarity and risk clarity. Everything else is noise.
My read, as someone who has held bitcoin since 2016: none of this should surprise anyone who lived through 2022. Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager collapsed within months of each other, taking billions of dollars of customer collateral into bankruptcy proceedings — this site's own post-mortem of those failures is worth reading alongside this survey. When respondents in 2026 point to liquidation risk and platform trust as reasons to hold back, they are not imagining hypothetical dangers. They are remembering real ones. The industry earned this skepticism the hard way, and it will not undo it with marketing copy.
The liquidation fear, in particular, is rational rather than naive. Crypto is volatile; forced liquidation at a local bottom is a real tail risk of every collateralized loan. The survey respondents are not wrong to weight it — they are pricing the product correctly. What they are asking for, in effect, is visibility: show me the liquidation mechanics before I sign, not in the fine print after.
The US and Australia are telling two different stories
The regional cut of the data is small but interesting. Australian crypto holders were significantly more likely than Americans to borrow proactively as part of financial planning, and more likely to compare lenders across platforms before choosing one. The US respondents showed a more measured borrowing posture and less comparison-shopping.
| Behaviour | Australia | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Borrowing posture | More likely to borrow proactively as part of financial planning | More measured, reactive posture |
| Choosing a lender | More likely to compare lenders across platforms | Less active provider comparison |
| What conversion depends on | An active shopping environment — pricing and terms matter | Trust-building comes first |
Directional findings as published; the report does not disclose per-country percentages. Source: Ledn / Protocol Theory, 2026.
My read: the Australian pattern is the healthier one, and not because Australians are braver. Comparison-shopping is what disciplines a lending market. Borrowers who compare five platforms force those platforms to compete on real terms — rates, LTV, liquidation mechanics — instead of on brand feelings. A market where borrowers comparison-shop is a market where transparency wins by default.
What would actually close the gap
The report's conclusion is that the next phase of crypto lending “is likely to be shaped by confidence, not just demand.” I agree, and I would push it one step further: confidence is not a communications deliverable. It is built from verifiable product properties, and the survey tells us exactly which ones.
Three things, in my view, would move the 14% number more than any advertising budget:
Publish the real cost of borrowing. Not a teaser APR — the all-in cost, with origination fees, rate-change conditions, and repayment terms stated plainly enough to compare across platforms. Rate opacity was the executive summary's top-tier barrier for a reason: it is the first thing a rational borrower checks and the thing platforms most often obscure.
Make liquidation mechanics legible before signing. Every platform knows its LTV thresholds, margin-call ladder, and grace windows. Showing borrowers a simulation of “what happens to my collateral if bitcoin drops 30%” costs nothing and answers the second-biggest fear in the dataset directly.
Prove custody, don't assert it. As a Bitcoin-first person, this is the one I care about most. The difference between 2021's lenders and today's better ones is not the marketing — it is proof-of-reserves, no-rehypothecation policies, and in the strongest designs, collateral the platform cannot touch at all. The survey's respondents want “confidence that collateral is held safely.” The industry knows how to provide that confidence cryptographically rather than contractually. It should.
None of this is exotic. It is the trust infrastructure that every mature collateralized-lending market already runs on, being asked for by survey respondents in plain language. The 6-to-1 gap is not a demand problem waiting for better persuasion. It is a confidence deficit waiting for better proof — and the platforms that provide it first will convert a disproportionate share of that waiting 88%.
Sources
- Ledn and Protocol Theory. (2026). The Crypto Borrowing Gap: Inside the Crypto Collateral Gap Between Borrowing Demand and Borrower Confidence. 21 Technologies Inc. Announcement and report: ledn.io/post/lending-research
- Galaxy Research. (November 19, 2025). The State of Crypto Leverage – Q3 2025. galaxy.com/insights/research
- CoinGecko. Global Cryptocurrency Market Cap, accessed May 2, 2026 — as cited in the Ledn / Protocol Theory report.