Utilising Bitcoin as collateral for liquidity, without selling, whilst maintaining non-custodial control, adheres to the genuine peer-to-peer ethos. It is a pragmatic realisation for those needing capital.

Disagree. If you use it as collateral, you can't or shouldn't then spend the collateral. Anyone lending will want assurance that you don't lose the collateral, which is why traditionally collateral has either been temporarily forfeit or can easily be seized. Collateralized bitcoin services typically tell people they can hold their keys. Well, now you're at a fork in the road - either its spendable p2p or its not. Bitcoin has the potential to end usury and restore equilibrium to the supply and demand curves (both usury and inflation shift the curves and cause mispricing, which has a cost **_in human lives._**). Go that route. Fix the damned money. This collateralized btc usury shit is a pied piper and will ruin the whole project.

I've often wondered about this conundrum: how can a lender take btc as collateral and allow the owner to retain control of it. I wouldn't loan someone money on a promise they'll hold the collateral and hand it over if needed. Seems to me that a smart contract escrow is the only solution and that has its own issues. Regarding the idea of fixing the money, that's the ultimate goal. (This scenario involves using real money BTC as collateral for paper money fiat.) Regarding usury, that's bad of course. The lender does deserve some interest, some gain for taking on the risk of giving the loan. But then, even with "usury", I think, well if the person agreed to take a loan at say 20% interest, they agreed to that price for the money. If they did not agree to it, they would not take the loan in the first place. Just some thoughts.

Loans can be restructured so the lender is actually buying a share at a higher than market price. There, usury finished. Some parts of the world do that and call it Islamic finance - it also was once Christian finance, before Calvin subverted the Reformation for his own usurious goals, which directly led to the first central bank, called the "Wisselbank" - it was part of the Netherlands' rise to power, and enabled extraordinary feats, such as invading England to install a Protestant king. The biggest part of the problem of usury is in the way fiat is created - its actually credit, not fiat. Slight difference, probably doesn't matter at this point. Banks create new money every time they make a loan. A modern bank is in no way related to the original banks, thus named for starting as dudes lending on the banks by Venice. Modern banks do not loan accumulated reserves, even if they're required to keep reserves. Their loans are always new money. The problem is, there's an interest rate on the loan, which means debt is always larger than the monetary base, and grows exponentially. The total debt can't be paid in full - that's impossible. Even were this not the case, usury would still be immoral. The moral way to lend is to pair it with ownership, which encourages some level of responsibility. The shift in finance that I want is not a violation of the time value of money. This is just a way to do it responsibly.

In our lending platform, the borrower locks the collateral in a multi-signature address created for that specific contract using his own enthropy. This escrow address is a 2 out of 3 multisig. Lender has one key, borrower has the second, and Hodl Hodl has the third in case a dispute arise and a resolution must be taken by the admins. Meaning that NO party on its own can move the BTC locked in escrow. Usury is not possible in an unregulated global free market like ours, where both parties agree on all the terms of the contract. If a lender asks for a too high APR percentage, they will just don't get any borrower. And if a borrower wants to pay a very low APR, they just won't find any lender. A contract occur when both parts find a match in the middle.