⚡ Spark has started to enter the institutional lending business, with Anchorage Digital as the third-party compliance custodian—— The first loan was secured by three institutions pledging $222 million BTC and borrowing $150 million USDC, with approximately 148% over collateralization. This should be a major update in the business structure of Spark @ spark dotfi; Institutions have long held the largest and highest quality collateral BTC, but this batch of collateral has hardly entered the on chain credit system, leaving a long-term gap in institutional level mortgage lending. Many people simply attribute the reason to the high risk on the chain, but I think this is still superficial. I quite agree with a judgment mentioned by @ jasonn_chen998: The problem lies not in the demand, but in the execution method. Institutional assets often have to be placed within a compliant custody framework, and the control, disposal, and disclosure obligations of assets determine that they naturally cannot independently pledge their coins in a public lending pool like retail investors; Moreover, it is extremely difficult to achieve "counterparty interpretability" for the funding sources and destinations of public agreements. Once an institution steps on the funding chain, the cost cannot be covered by the benefits. Spark's approach this time is essentially to combine on chain lending and compliant custody while acknowledging this practical constraint: The collateral remains in compliant custody, while liquidation and risk disposal are monitored and executed by the custodian, while lending, interest calculation, and fund allocation are completed on chain. Institutions do not need to give up their compliance bottom line, and on chain liquidity has the first opportunity to be called upon on a large scale. This step will directly change the meaning of interest rates—— The interest rates in the era of individual investors are more the result of homogeneous funds competing in the existing liquidity; In the institutional context, interest rates are closer to a financing cost that is paid for stability, certainty, and reusability. As long as this structure can operate for a long time, institutions do not mind paying higher interest rates because what they are buying is not cheap funds, but a long-term financing channel that does not require repeated games. This also means that on chain lending has the potential to introduce exogenous demand, which is a clearer and more sustainable profit path for Spark.