Money Protocol vs Nexo vs Ledn: How Bitcoin-Backed Borrowing Actually Differs
If you hold Bitcoin and you want cash without selling, you have more options in 2026 than you did three years ago. The bad news is that most "borrow against your Bitcoin" products are marketed with the same words — liquidity, no taxable event, keep your upside — while the machinery underneath them is wildly different.
The words on the landing page do not protect you. The architecture does. So instead of comparing advertised rates, this post compares the thing that actually determines whether you get your Bitcoin back: who holds the collateral, and what enforces the rules. We will line up Nexo and Ledn as the two best-known custodial Bitcoin lenders, and Money Protocol as a self-custodial protocol on Rootstock.
The one question that sorts everything
Before any feature comparison, ask one question: while my loan is open, who can move my Bitcoin? There are only two answers. A custodian can — your BTC sits on their balance sheet, and you have a contractual claim to it, not direct control. This is Nexo, Ledn, and every CeFi lender. Or only a smart contract can, and only by published rules — your BTC sits in code, and no employee, treasury desk, or risk committee can reach it. This is Money Protocol.
Everyone who lived through Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager, and Genesis in 2022 already knows why that question is the whole game. In each failure, the rate looked fine right up until the withdrawals stopped. The rate was never the risk. The custody was.
Nexo: the full-service custodial lender
Nexo is the most feature-rich of the three. You deposit BTC and many other assets, and you can borrow against them in fiat or stablecoins, often with a credit-card-style product on top. Rates are tiered and can drop to low single digits if you hold their native token and keep a high loan-to-value buffer.
What you accept in exchange: rehypothecation risk, because Nexo has to earn a spread to pay for those features, and earning a spread means doing something with deposited assets — exactly what blew up the 2022 cohort. You also accept counterparty discretion, since terms and withdrawal availability can change. The tax-free loan is real, but it is only as safe as the company.
Ledn: the focused, more conservative custodian
Ledn narrowed the model deliberately. It concentrates on Bitcoin, has leaned into transparency with proof-of-reserves attestations, and offers tiers where collateral is not rehypothecated. That is a meaningful improvement over the 2022 playbook. But it is still custodial: your keys are with Ledn or its custody partners, and a no-rehypothecation promise is a policy enforced by audits and reputation, not by code you can verify is running right now. Ledn is arguably the most responsible custodial Bitcoin lender on the market. It is a better trust relationship. It is still a trust relationship.
Money Protocol: borrowing with no one in the middle
Money Protocol takes the other road entirely. It is a self-custodial protocol modeled on Liquity and built for Bitcoin holders on Rootstock, a Bitcoin sidechain. You deposit RBTC (Bitcoin on Rootstock) into a smart contract, which the protocol tracks as your vault — an isolated position that is yours alone. You mint BPD, a USD-pegged stablecoin, against that collateral, up to a minimum collateral ratio. There is no interest: you pay a small, transparent one-time fee at borrow, not an annual rate that compounds while you sleep. You repay whenever you want, three days or three years later, and your RBTC is released. No fixed term, no renewal, no phone call.
Why can the interest genuinely be 0%? Because nobody is lending you anything. You are minting a claim against your own collateral, inside rules enforced by code. The protocol does not need to earn a yield on your Bitcoin because it never uses your Bitcoin. Solvency is maintained by a stability pool and a published liquidation threshold, not by a desk redeploying deposits.
The trade-off is honest, too. You take on smart-contract risk and the responsibility of managing your own collateral ratio. There is no support line that can reverse a liquidation, because liquidation is a rule applied identically to everyone, with no exceptions and no favorites. For a certain kind of holder, that predictability is the entire appeal.
If that is you, you can borrow against Bitcoin at 0% interest without handing your coins to anyone.
Side by side
The differences line up cleanly. On custody: Nexo and Ledn are custodial; Money Protocol is self-custodial. On who can move your BTC while the loan is open: the company at Nexo, the company or its custodian at Ledn, and only the smart contract at Money Protocol. On interest: tiered APR at Nexo, APR at Ledn, and 0% (a one-time fee) at Money Protocol. On rehypothecation: yes at Nexo, limited or tiered at Ledn, none at Money Protocol. On fixed term: varies for the custodians, none at Money Protocol. On liquidation: a discretionary margin call at the custodians, a code-enforced published threshold at Money Protocol. The underlying is multi-asset at Nexo, BTC-focused at Ledn, and RBTC on Rootstock at Money Protocol. And the main risk you carry is counterparty risk with the custodians versus smart-contract and self-management risk with the protocol.
So which one is best?
There is no universal winner, and any post that tells you there is one is selling something. The right answer depends on which risk you would rather hold. If you want a polished, multi-asset experience with a card and you are comfortable trusting an operator, a custodial lender is a reasonable fit. If you want a custodian but the most conservative one, the proof-of-reserves model is the better trust relationship. But if your reason for holding Bitcoin in the first place was to not trust a third party with it, then handing it to a custodian to borrow against it quietly defeats the purpose. A self-custodial protocol is the only one of the three that keeps your original thesis intact.
That last group is who Money Protocol is built for. It is not trying to be everything. It is trying to be the option where the answer to "who can move my Bitcoin while my loan is open?" is nobody — and to make that answer enforceable by code rather than promised by a brand. The full mechanics, the stability pool, the MP token, and the liquidation threshold are documented at docs.moneyprotocol.co, and the main site is moneyprotocol.co. Compare the rates if you like. But compare the custody first.