ETHLend hits £1m crypto-P2P loans milestone

CRYPTO-BACKED peer-to-peer lending platform ETHLend has funded $2m (£1.4m) of loans in just over a month since launching.

The platform, which lets investors back business and personal loans worldwide n the Ethereum (ETH) digital currency, only went live in December but says it has already facilitated 438 loans.
Its biggest loan so far was for 83ETH, equivalent to £58,681.

Read more: Peer-to-peer Bitcoin lending fund launches

The platform lets borrowers request loan amounts and post other digital currencies as collateral as well as paying interest on the loans.

It also ran an initial coin offering last year, creating a tradeable LEND token that can be used to pay transaction fees.

The lender says it is now working on improving its website and adding to the approved digital currencies that can be added as collateral.

“Long gone are the days when one of the most frequently asked questions was ‘Why wouldn’t someone just sell their tokens instead of asking for a loan?’” ETHLend said in a note to investors.

“ETHLend has led the way into a completely new era of cryptocurrency finance by building on top of the Ethereum network a fully decentralised financial marketplace allowing lenders and borrowers from all over the world to create P2P lending agreements in a secure and transparent way using blockchain and smart contracts.”

Read more: Blockchain P2P lending partnership formed