Blockchain
Block Earner at Intersekt 2026: The Future of Lending Panel
At Intersekt in Melbourne, our Director and Chief Commercial Officer James Coombes joined the Future of Lending panel alongside Craig Carroll of JustFund, Yien Hong of Judo Bank, and moderator Dan Knight from K&L Gates. Intersekt is FinTech Australia's annual festival, a big event for local industry, its regulators and its investors. This year's lending panel put three lenders on stage with three very different ideas of what counts as security, and less disagreement between them than you might expect.
JustFund lends against a future legal entitlement, what a court, a mediation or a negotiation says you're owed after a divorce or a death in the family. Judo lends on character and cash flow, sending bankers out to meet business owners in person before looking at what they own. Block Earner lends against Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP.
James's shared that these aren't opposing models:
"Lending for forward wealth, and lending for existing wealth, and lending for wealth or assets that are tied up in a strange or hard-to-understand asset, are all just different types of security."
What actually separates them is how fast a lender can sell the asset if a loan goes bad. On that measure, crypto does something many assets can't.
"We've written over $100 million in loans to retail people and never written off a single cent. The main reason for that is we secure it against an asset that's 24/7 liquid."
That comes from how the loans are built. If the market moves against a borrower and their LVR becomes unhealthy, we don't sell anything on the spot. Individual borrowers get a 30-day default notice and three ways to fix it: top up the crypto security, repay part of the loan, or sell a little to bring the ratio back. If the price recovers first, they do nothing.
James also made a funding point that gets less airtime. Bitcoin has no domicile. It's priced in every country and tradeable into roughly 170 currencies, so we don't have to source our debt from a single economy. We borrow from multiple sources instead, which means an RBA decision doesn't flow straight through to our borrowers the way it does at a bank.
Then there's where this goes next: tokenised gold, tokenised stocks, tokenised money market funds. Lending products that have historically been reserved for the very wealthy, opened up to people who aren't.
"You don't need to have $100 million to borrow against your stocks. We write loans from $50 to $5 million."
Watch the full panel below.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this blog is general in nature and is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice, and should not be relied upon as such. Block Earner does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information presented. You should consider your own personal circumstances and seek professional advice before making any financial or investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investments carry risk. Crypto-backed loans carry real risks. The value of your crypto can fall sharply, rapidly increasing your LVR and reducing any initial buffer. This may require you to add security or repay part of the loan and could result in some or all of your crypto being sold.
Approved applicants only. Terms, conditions, fees and charges apply. Credit provided by Web3 Loans Pty Ltd ACN 668 516 952 and managed by Web3 Ventures Pty Ltd trading as Block Earner (ACN 655 090 869) under Australian Credit License 542689.
