How to Compare Crypto Loan Rates: The All-In Cost of Borrowing

Advertised crypto loan rates leave out origination and recurring fees; here is how to calculate the annualized borrowing cost and what else to weigh. Add the interest rate to every disclosed fee, convert collateral-based fees into a percentage of the loan, and hold loan size, loan-to-value and term constant. On that basis a 5.00% rate can cost 7.00%.

Key takeaways

• No two lenders put the same costs inside the advertised rate, so compare the annualized borrowing cost: interest plus every disclosed fee, as a percentage of the amount borrowed.
• Fees charged on collateral cost double their stated rate at 50% loan-to-value and four times at 25%; the more conservatively you borrow, the more they cost you.
• In the worked example, a 5.00% rate with a 1.00% origination fee, a 0.20% collateral fee and a 0.30% wrapping fee costs 7.00% to carry on a $200,000 loan.
• On a $250,000 loan at 50% LTV for twelve months, the table reports each lender's own published terms; no all-in annualized cost figure is published for a lender whose pricing is not publicly disclosed, because Abra does not assert a competitor's price it cannot substantiate.
• Whether a rate is held steady for the term or moves, maximum LTV, collateral accepted, custody model, liquidation mechanics and state availability can each outweigh a rate difference.

Why is the advertised crypto loan rate rarely what you pay?

A crypto-backed loan is a secured loan. You pledge Bitcoin or another digital asset, draw dollars against it, and keep the asset unless its value falls far enough to trigger liquidation. Because the loan is collateralized and there is usually no credit check, lenders compete loudly on the interest rate.

The difficulty is that 'rate' is not standardized in this market the way APR is in mortgage lending. Four kinds of cost routinely sit outside the advertised number: origination and draw fees, fees charged on collateral rather than on the loan, conversion, wrapping and custody costs, and rate tiers you may not qualify for. Each is covered below.

You cannot compare crypto-backed loans on their advertised rates because no two lenders put the same costs inside that number. To compare them honestly, add the interest rate to every fee the lender discloses, convert any fee charged on collateral into a percentage of the amount you actually borrow, and hold the loan size, loan-to-value and term constant across every lender. That figure, the illustrative annualized borrowing cost, is the one that compares like for like.

Abra has a commercial interest in the crypto-backed financing offering included in the comparison below. It identifies structural differences among the compared offerings, including circumstances in which another provider may have different or more favorable terms and circumstances in which Abra's fee structure may result in higher costs. Competitor figures come from each competitor's own published disclosures and are marked where they do not publish.

Which fees sit outside the advertised rate?

Origination and draw fees are a one-time charge on the amount you draw. On a twelve-month loan, an origination fee translates almost point for point into annualized cost: a two-point fee adds two points to what the loan costs you over a year, which is frequently larger than the difference between two lenders' headline rates. Check whether the fee applies to every draw or only the first, since on a revolving line a per-draw fee changes the economics of using it. Check too whether it is deducted from the proceeds, in which case you receive less than you borrowed while paying interest on the full amount.

Fees charged on collateral rather than on the loan are the ones that escape notice, and the effect is structural. A fee assessed on your collateral is not comparable to the same percentage assessed on your loan. If you have posted twice your loan in collateral to sit at 50% loan-to-value, a fee on collateral costs you double its stated rate as a share of the money you actually received. At 25% loan-to-value it costs four times. As loan-to-value decreases, a collateral-based fee represents a larger percentage of the amount borrowed. This applies to Abra's own pricing, as shown below.

Conversion, wrapping and custody costs arise because several lenders do not hold your Bitcoin as Bitcoin. Some convert it to a wrapped representation to use it on a particular chain; some wrap it for deposit into lending protocols. Each round trip usually carries a fee, and each introduces a dependency on infrastructure beyond the lender itself, which is a risk question as well as a cost question.

How does rate tiering change the crypto loan rate you actually get?

Advertised rates are commonly the floor of a tiered structure, and the tiers determine whether that rate is available to you. Three tiering models are in use. Only one of them is within your control at the point of borrowing, so it is worth telling them apart.

• Tiered by loan size. The best rate requires a large loan. Rate cards are usually published; find the bracket your loan actually falls into rather than reading the top line.
• Tiered by loan-to-value. The best rate requires a conservative position, which may be a trade-off you were happy to make anyway.
• Tiered by token holding. The best rate requires holding a quantity of the lender's own token. This makes the advertised floor unavailable to anyone unwilling to take on that separate, unrelated exposure, and it is worth treating an advertised rate of this kind as a different product from one you can access on day one.

A lender may also quote a 'from' rate that is the floor across several collateral assets. If you intend to pledge Bitcoin, confirm the rate applies to Bitcoin specifically. In the comparison below, Ledn's rate is tiered by loan size across five brackets — under $250,000 at 11.49% APR; $250,000 to $500,000 at 10.99%; $500,000 to $1,000,000 at 10.49%; $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 at 9.99%; and $2,000,000 and above at 9.25% — with the tier set at application, refinance or renewal (Ledn, “Bitcoin-backed Loans,” ledn.io (rate tiers retrieved Sep 25, 2026)); Figure publishes a single headline rate quoted at 50% loan-to-value and requires an application to obtain a personalised rate; Coinbase's is set by supply and demand on an onchain lending market on Base; and Abra's is a single rate with no tiering by size or token holding.

How do you calculate the annualized borrowing cost of a crypto loan?

Once you have the components, the arithmetic is simple. Annualized borrowing cost, as a percentage of the loan, is the sum of five items: the interest rate; the origination fee as a percentage of the loan; annual fees charged on the loan; annual fees charged on collateral, divided by loan-to-value; and one-time fees charged on collateral, divided by loan-to-value.

Dividing by loan-to-value is what converts a collateral-based fee to a loan-based one. At 50% loan-to-value you divide by 0.5, which doubles it. Hold the loan size, the loan-to-value and the term constant across every lender you compare, and use the rate for your bracket rather than the advertised floor.

Where a lender publishes both an interest rate and an APR, you have a free check on your method. APR is a regulated disclosure that already incorporates fees (Regulation Z, 12 CFR 1026.22(a)(1) and 12 CFR 1026.4(a) (Truth in Lending Act)), so your calculated figure should land close to it. Regulation Z governs consumer credit, so where a crypto-backed loan is written as commercial or entity credit a quoted APR may be a market convention rather than a Regulation Z disclosure. If it does not, you have either missed a fee or misread its basis. A published APR is calculated on a particular loan size, often a small one, so expect a modest difference rather than an exact match. Lenders who publish no APR are not necessarily more expensive; they are simply less directly comparable, which is the reason to do this calculation yourself.

What does the calculation look like in a worked example?

The figures below are round numbers chosen to show the mechanics. They are not any lender's actual pricing; for that, see the comparison table in the next section. Take a hypothetical lender advertising a 5.00% rate, with a 1.00% origination fee on the loan, a 0.20% annual fee on collateral, and a 0.30% wrapping fee also charged on collateral. The loan is $200,000 at 50% loan-to-value, meaning $400,000 of collateral, held for twelve months.

Interest at 5.00% on the loan is $10,000, or 5.00% of the loan. Origination at 1.00% is $2,000, or 1.00%. The 0.20% annual fee on $400,000 of collateral is $800, which is 0.40% of the loan. The 0.30% wrapping round trip on collateral is $1,200, or 0.60% of the loan. The total is $14,000, or 7.00%.

Illustrative only. Not any lender’s pricing.

A 5.00% rate costs 7.00% to carry. Two of the four line items landed at double their stated percentage purely because they are charged on collateral. Nothing about that two-point gap is visible on a pricing page, and it is larger than the difference between many lenders' headline rates.

How do Abra, Coinbase, Figure and Ledn compare on a $250,000 crypto loan?

The table holds the scenario constant: a $250,000 loan secured by $500,000 of collateral, 50% loan-to-value, held for twelve months. It shows each disclosed cost alongside the terms that govern the loan. Figures are compiled from each lender's own published terms, and each cell carries the date the lender's own disclosure was read. Cells reading 'not published' are exactly that: left empty rather than estimated.

On that scenario Abra's own published pricing is a 4.40% rate plus 1.90 percentage points of fees. No all-in annualized borrowing cost is published here for Coinbase, Figure or Ledn: Coinbase's borrowing rate is set by supply and demand on an onchain lending market rather than published as a rate for this scenario, no published Figure APR or rate sheet for a loan of this size could be sourced, and Ledn publishes a tiered APR rather than an all-in cost for the scenario. Abra will not publish a competitor's price it cannot substantiate, so no ranking of the four lenders is claimed, and this is not a comparison of all available crypto-backed loan products. Larger or smaller loans fall into different rate tiers at several lenders and produce different figures.

Two rate sources deserve a plain description. Abra's figure is its published USDC borrowing rate, a variable compounding APY. Coinbase's USDC loans are powered by Morpho on Base, with pledged BTC converted to cbBTC; Coinbase now offers both a variable-rate loan and a fixed-rate cbBTC-backed USDC loan through Morpho, and the collateral set has expanded beyond cbBTC to nine markets, adding ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA, DOGE and LTC. Coinbase's own disclosure says lending rates fluctuate with the supply and demand of the lending markets, and no Coinbase or Morpho source describes the quoted rate as a 7-day average borrow APY, so that characterization is not made here (Coinbase, “Crypto-Backed Loans” (accessed Sept. 24, 2026); Morpho, “Coinbase” case study (accessed Sept. 24, 2026)). Ledn publishes stated nominal rates that are fixed for the term of a given loan but subject to change for new loans, refinancing or renewal; Figure publishes a stated nominal rate quoted at 50% loan-to-value and does not describe it as fixed (Ledn, “Bitcoin-backed Loans” (accessed Sept. 24, 2026); Figure, crypto loan calculator (accessed Sept. 24, 2026)). Loan terms, rates and LTV limits vary by provider and change without notice; verify current terms directly with each lender.

Abra crypto-backed loans on BTC and ETH collateral

Why does your loan-to-value change which lender costs less?

Because some lenders charge fees on the loan and others on collateral, the ranking is not fixed across the loan-to-value range. A lender whose fees are charged on the loan has a cost that stays flat as your loan-to-value changes. A lender whose fees are charged on collateral has a cost that rises as your loan-to-value falls, because the same loan is now supported by more collateral.

The practical consequence is a crossover point. Below it, a lender with a higher headline rate can become the cheaper option overall. This matters especially to the borrower who deliberately over-collateralizes to keep a wide buffer above the liquidation threshold: exactly the borrower who is being careful, and exactly the borrower likely to assume that being careful is free.

Abra's own fee structure is collateral-based in part. The 0.20% annual collateral fee is 0.40% of the loan at 50% loan-to-value and a larger share of the loan at any lower loan-to-value, so this effect can increase Abra's cost as a percentage of the amount borrowed at lower loan-to-value levels. Work the arithmetic above at your own loan-to-value rather than reading the headline figure.

What matters besides the crypto loan rate?

Cost is one input. Structural characteristics such as custody, collateral use, liquidation mechanics, term, liquidity and jurisdiction may also be material to a borrower and should be evaluated together with price. The considerations below may affect the relevance of a rate comparison.

• Fixed or variable. A variable rate can rise after you have borrowed; a fixed rate cannot. Abra's rate is variable, derived from an underlying lending market. A borrower who needs to know the cost for the next twelve months with confidence may prefer a rate that is fixed for the term, and should compare on that basis.
• Maximum loan-to-value. This determines how much cash a given amount of collateral can raise, and the range across lenders is wide. If your binding constraint is how much you can borrow rather than what it costs, start by filtering on maximum loan-to-value and only then compare price among the lenders that clear your threshold.
• Collateral accepted. Some lenders take a single asset; others take several. This is a qualifying question, not a preference: if a lender does not accept what you hold, its rate is irrelevant to you. Abra accepts a narrower set than some of the alternatives in the table.
• Custody and protocol risk. Ask where your collateral actually goes. Models in use include qualified custodians, decentralized MPC custody, and deployment into DeFi lending protocols. Collateral deployed to a protocol carries smart-contract and protocol risk on top of the ordinary risks of a collateralized loan. Abra wraps Bitcoin collateral for deposit into DeFi lending pools, which carries that protocol risk.
• Liquidation mechanics. Three separate things are worth establishing, and they are frequently disclosed at different levels of detail: the loan-to-value at which you receive a margin call, the loan-to-value at which collateral is actually sold, and what it costs when that happens. Trade spreads, liquidation penalties and optional liquidation-protection products only ever apply on your worst day, which is precisely why they repay reading in advance. A high maximum loan-to-value paired with an undisclosed liquidation threshold deserves a direct question.
• Term structure and repayment. Open-term loans have no maturity date and generally no prepayment penalty. Fixed terms have both a defined end and, usually, a fixed rate; some accrue interest to a lump sum at closure, and renewal may trigger a fresh fee. Open-term is more flexible, fixed-term more predictable. Neither is better in the abstract, and the right answer depends on whether you know when you will repay.
• What you actually receive, and where you live. Loan proceeds may be dollars or a stablecoin; if you need funds in a bank account, that difference may mean an extra conversion step and cost. And state availability can override every other consideration on this page — several lenders in the comparison do not operate in every US jurisdiction, so check eligibility before doing any arithmetic at all.

Where do these numbers come from, and how do you run the comparison yourself?

Everything in the comparison is drawn from public sources and refreshed weekly. Each lender's own published terms are the primary source and are preferred over third-party reporting wherever both exist; where a lender's own pages disagree, the more specific and more recently updated one is used. On-chain and protocol data is used where a lender's product is funded by a public lending market, as with the Morpho market on Base that powers Coinbase's USDC loans, and it can supply figures the lender does not publish, such as a liquidation threshold enforced in a contract. Variable rates are shown as a short trailing average rather than a spot value. Third-party reporting is used sparingly and marked as such. Unpublished fields are left empty rather than estimated. Lenders are excluded where every advertised rate depends on holding the lender's own token, which implies nothing about that lender's competitiveness in either direction.

To run the comparison on your own numbers, follow the steps below. If a lender will not tell you the basis of a fee, that is itself useful information.

1. Start from your real numbers: the amount you want to borrow, the collateral you hold, the loan-to-value you are comfortable at, and how long you expect to keep the loan.
2. Filter first on the things that disqualify a lender outright — your state, your collateral asset, the loan-to-value you need. Price is only worth comparing among lenders that can actually serve you.
3. For each remaining lender, find the rate for your loan size and loan-to-value, not the advertised floor.
4. List every fee, and establish the basis of each one. “0.20%” of what?
5. Divide collateral-based fees by your loan-to-value, then sum.
6. Compare that total, and weigh it against the structural factors above.

Model a loan scenario in the Abra simulator

Disclaimer. This guide is educational and is not tax, legal, accounting, financial or investment advice, and it is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation to enter into any borrowing arrangement. Abra Capital Management, LP is an SEC-registered investment adviser. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor endorsement by the SEC. Abra has a commercial interest in the crypto-backed financing offering described here. Competitor information is compiled from publicly available disclosures as of the date shown and refreshed weekly; rates and terms change frequently and without notice, Abra does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of third-party information, and terms actually offered by other providers may differ materially from their published terms. Crypto-backed loans involve substantial risk, including liquidation of collateral at an unfavorable time; loans are overcollateralized, digital-asset prices are volatile, and collateral deployed to DeFi protocols carries additional smart-contract and protocol risk. Abra products and customer accounts are not subject to FDIC or SIPC protection (FDIC, Fact Sheet: What the Public Needs to Know About FDIC Deposit Insurance and Crypto Companies, July 28, 2022; SIPC, What SIPC Protects).