Make the Best of Your NFTs in the Current Bear Market

The start of this year continued to be a lucrative crypto market, especially the DeFi sector with more than $94 billion of tokens and coins staked. The market seemed unstoppable – right until crypto winter set in. The last couple of months have seen major downturns, with TVL being slashed by half to roughly $43 billion. This also has affected the NFT arena and for many, a significant downturn in their investment.

Yet, there are ways where people can use their NFTs to their advantage by collateralizing these for loans. Instead of liquidating the expensive investments, owners have the choice to gain liquidity without losing the NFTs.

How? Through NFT loan platforms. Here is a selection of a few websites where you can put up your NFT for a loan and survive the current bear market without selling your collectibles.

NFTuloan

NFTuloan is a new platform, but its flexibility and expanded services make it the perfect go-to NFT loan platform. The website is easy to navigate and offers good interest, to both loan borrowers and lenders. Automated on-chain NFT value and instant loan through the innovative Peer-2-Pool system.

Pros

• 200 different collectables acceptable, including digital art, music, metaverse items etc.
• Extremely high LTV (70%).
• Liquidity option to protect lenders.
• A secondary market for defaulted NFTs.

Cons

• Loan available in ETH tokens only.
• It is currently limited to the Ethereum chain.

Stater

While having practically unlimited NFT support, as long as it is on Ethereum, Stater falls behind as it leaves the NFT evaluation and price determination in the hands of the lender. The borrower can put up any NFT and set any asset value they like. A decent 60% LTV also makes the platform attractive for lenders.

Pros

• Open to all Ethereum NFTs.
• Flexible terms.
• Lender investment protection.

Cons

• No asset evaluation system.
• The P2P environment means lenders have to put up the complete LTV value to take part.

Bend DAO

Another platform that leverages P2Pool to allow instant loans on NFTs, the platform developers have given the community the power to control the platform specifics such as interest rates through its DAO. It has a decent LTV but falls short to impress due to limited NFT collections.

Pros

• P2Pool for instant loans.
• Decent pool size.
• Flexible loan duration.

Cons

• LTV is less than half of the market-leading platforms (30%).
• ETH is only accepted as loan and lender deposits.
• 6 NFT collections supported.

JPEG’D

Taking a cue from the pixelated art NFT scene, the complete JPEG’d website reflects its first accepted collection of CryptoPunks. Though also employing the P2Pool concept, it introduced a little bit of complexity as lenders can only stake the native JPEG tokens or PUSd, the native stablecoin.

Pros

• Minting PUSd means against NFTs means instant loans
• Fairly decent LTV (32%).
• PUSd can be used to provide liquidity back into the pool.

Cons

• Loans are available in PUSd only.
• Currently, the platform accepts 6 NFT collections.
• Loans only last a month.

Pine

Offering more than simple loans against NFTs, Pine has made its mark with innovative services such as Pine Now, Pay Later, an instant crypto loan that allows people to buy NFTs. The bought NFTs are automatically collateralized and handed over when the loan (plus interest) is paid.

Pros

• Loans in ETH or SOL.
• Borrowers retain NFT characteristics such as access to airdrops.
• Evaluation based on statistical analysis rather than floor or index price.

Cons

• The loan function is still in the beta stage.
• Developers retain the right to pause contracts.
• LTV set by lenders (range between 30-50%).