Crypto Lending and Borrowing Statistics 2026: Big Money Moves

Crypto-collateralized borrowing reached an all-time high of $73.59 billion at the end of Q3 2025, surpassing the prior 2021 cycle peak by 6.09%, according to Galaxy Research. On-chain protocols now carry 66.9% of all crypto-collateralized debt, a structural shift from the 48.6% share DeFi held during the last bull market.

The live picture across decentralized finance lending dashboards looks tighter four quarters later. DefiLlama tracks $37.382 billion in total value locked across the DeFi lending category as of June 22, 2026, with Aave holding $12.728 billion of that supply across 22 chains.

Key Takeaways

• Crypto-collateralized lending hit a record $73.59 billion at the end of Q3 2025, surpassing the $69.37 billion Q4 2021 peak by 6.09%, per Galaxy Research.
• DeFi lending applications reached $40.99 billion in Q3 2025, expanding $14.52 billion quarter over quarter on Bitcoin-collateralized borrows.
• CeFi lending totaled $24.37 billion as of September 30, 2025, growing 37.11% quarter over quarter as surviving lenders moved to fully collateralized books.
• DefiLlama tracks the live DeFi lending category at $37.382 billion in total value locked across 22 protocols and more on June 22, 2026, with $21.6 million in weekly fees.
• The top three CeFi lenders (Tether, Nexo, and Galaxy) control 75.66% of tracked CeFi lending, with Tether alone holding $14.6 billion in secured loans.
• DeFi open borrows grew 959% in the eight quarters from Q4 2022 to Q4 2024, rising from the $1.8 billion bear market bottom to $19.1 billion, according to Galaxy Research.
• Q4 2025 combined lending fell about 10% quarter on quarter, primarily on falling DeFi asset prices, while CeFi continued to grow.

Editor’s Choice

• DefiLlama’s live DeFi lending category sits at $37.382 billion TVL on June 22, 2026.
• The Aave snapshot shows $12.728 billion in TVL and $10.063 billion in active borrows across 22 chains.
• Morpho holds $6.898 billion in TVL with $3.613 billion borrowed across 38 chains, per DefiLlama.
• The crypto lending market peaked at $64.4 billion in Q4 2021 before bankruptcies pushed the trough to $14.2 billion in Q3 2023.
• The Tether cross-reference shows $14.6 billion in secured loans and a 59.91% share of CeFi lending tracked by Galaxy Research as of Q3 2025.
• Aave’s Plasma-chain deployment attracted more than $3 billion in outstanding borrows within five weeks of launch, making Plasma Aave’s second-largest deployment after Ethereum.

Crypto Lending Market Size

• Combined market: $73.59 billion at the end of Q3 2025, with $20.46 billion growth in a single quarter.
• DeFi applications: $40.99 billion (55.7% share); CeFi: $24.37 billion.
• On-chain share: 66.9% of all crypto-collateralized borrowing, up from 48.6% in 2021.

Galaxy Research’s quarterly sizing puts the combined CeFi and DeFi market at $73.59 billion, with $20.46 billion of growth landing in that single quarter. DeFi applications captured $40.99 billion of the total, a 55.7% share, while centralized lenders carried $24.37 billion.

Source: Galaxy Research State of Crypto Lending, Q4 2024 and Q3 2025

• The headline number deserves an asterisk that Galaxy itself flags. Some CeFi entities mint CDP stablecoins or borrow on DeFi venues to fund off-chain books, so a fraction of the total is double-counted.
• On-chain channels now account for 66.9% of all crypto-collateralized borrowing, up from 48.6% at the 2021 peak. Lending applications carry more than 80% of on-chain activity, with CDP stablecoins holding the remaining 16%.
• The cumulative market grew 214% between Q4 2022 and Q4 2024, then climbed again through Q3 2025. The composition flipped along the way: DeFi held only 34% of the combined borrows through the 2020 to 2021 bull cycle and reached 63% by Q4 2024.

By the numbers: Galaxy Research recorded the all-time crypto lending high at $73.59 billion in Q3 2025, with onchain protocols carrying 66.9% of the total. DeFi expanded $14.52 billion quarter over quarter, while CeFi growth ran on fully collateralized books.

DeFi vs CeFi: Where the Borrowing Actually Lives

DeFi anchors the market, but CeFi survivors now run only against full collateral.

• DeFi lending applications carried $40.99 billion in open borrows at the end of Q3 2025, per Galaxy Research.
• CeFi outstanding loans reached $24.37 billion as of September 30, 2025, a 37.11% quarter-over-quarter gain.
• The 2022 collapse cost CeFi 82% of its open borrows, pushing the segment from $34.8 billion to roughly $6.4 billion at the trough.
• DeFi lending applications grew 959% in the eight quarters between Q4 2022 and Q4 2024, rising from $1.8 billion to $19.1 billion in open borrows.
• DeFi’s share of total borrowing rose from 34% through the 2020 to 2021 cycle to 63% by Q4 2024, per Galaxy Research.
• CeFi has three subtypes: OTC, prime brokerage, and on-chain private credit, with bespoke loan-to-value, maturity, and interest terms set between counterparties.
• Q4 2025 saw combined lending decline about 10% quarter on quarter on falling DeFi asset prices, while CeFi continued to grow on Tether, Maple, Galaxy, Nexo, and Coinbase.

On-chain lending did not just absorb the lost CeFi flow after 2022; it grew faster because algorithmic liquidation never paused through the collapse.

Don't chase the news. Let us curate it.

You get one weekly briefing with only the stories that matter. If the market is quiet, we skip it.

Email address

Get the Weekly Briefing - it's free!

✅ Join readers from Visa, Vanguard, and the FDIC.

Recent Developments

• November 2025 Galaxy Research data showed the $73.59 billion all-time high at the end of Q3 2025, with DeFi at $40.99 billion and CeFi at $24.37 billion.
• Q4 2025 Galaxy’s quarterly update flagged a 10% quarter-on-quarter decline in combined lending tied to DeFi price drops, while CeFi expansion continued.
• Q3 2025 Aave’s deployment on the Plasma blockchain attracted more than $3 billion in outstanding borrows within five weeks, becoming Aave’s second-largest deployment.
• Q3 2025 Tether reported $14.6 billion in secured loans in its Q3 transparency report, lifting its CeFi market share to 59.91%.
• June 22, 2026 DefiLlama’s live DeFi lending category showed $37.382 billion in TVL with $21.6 million in weekly fees.
• 2026 Stablecoin supply across the market sat at $315.304 billion with USDT at 59.05% dominance, per DefiLlama.

Top DeFi Lending Protocols by TVL

Aave still leads by a wide margin, while Morpho, SparkLend, JustLend, and Maple reshaped the second layer after years of Compound dominance.

• Aave tops the rankings with $12.728 billion in TVL and $10.063 billion in active borrows across 22 chains, per DefiLlama.
• Morpho carries $6.898 billion in TVL and $3.613 billion in borrows across 38 chains, the broadest chain footprint among major lenders.
• SparkLend, the Sky Protocol lending venue, holds $3.474 billion in TVL with $1.6 billion borrowed across 2 chains.
• JustLend on Tron sits at $3.115 billion in TVL, though only $125.94 million of that supply is actively borrowed.
• Maple Finance carries $2.129 billion in TVL and $1.824 billion borrowed across 3 chains, the highest utilization rate among the top six.
• Compound Finance holds $1.182 billion in TVL with $572.97 million borrowed across 10 chains, a long way from its 2020 peak.
• Aave’s protocol-wide utilization sits near approximately 79% based on $10.063 billion borrowed against $12.728 billion supplied.
• Aave generated $6.89 million in trailing seven-day fees and $930,606 in revenue across all deployments.

Source: DefiLlama lending category snapshot, June 22, 2026

Key finding: DefiLlama places Aave at the top of DeFi protocols by total value locked, putting protocol utilization near four-fifths. Morpho’s wide chain footprint dwarfs every competitor in deployment count, though Aave still holds nearly double its TVL.

CeFi Lending: Tether’s 59.91% Dominance

The Q3 2025 top three mirror the 2022-peak concentration but carry fundamentally different risk books.

• Tether leads CeFi with $14.6 billion in secured loans and a 59.91% market share as of September 30, 2025.
• Nexo carries $2.04 billion in outstanding CeFi loans, placing second in Galaxy Research’s tracked book.
• Galaxy itself holds $1.8 billion in CeFi loans, rounding out the top three.
• The top three CeFi lenders combine for 75.66% of tracked CeFi lending in Q3 2025, per Galaxy Research.
• Tether’s share rose 2.89 percentage points from Q2 2025 to Q3 2025 as competitors grew more slowly.
• CeFi at the Q1 2022 peak was dominated by Genesis, BlockFi, and Celsius, which together held $26.4 billion of the $34.8 billion market, or 76%.
• All three Q1 2022 leaders filed for bankruptcy by 2023, leaving Genesis with a peak loan book of $14.6 billion.
• Q4 2025 CeFi growth continued, driven by Tether, Maple Finance, Galaxy Digital, Nexo, and Coinbase, even as combined market lending declined 10% quarter on quarter.

Genesis and BlockFi extended large uncollateralized lines to trading firms; today’s top three operate against fully collateralized books with public disclosures.

Borrowing Composition: What People Actually Borrow Against

The collateral side of the book is concentrated in a handful of assets, and the borrowed side runs almost entirely in dollar-pegged stablecoins. That asymmetry shapes every other figure in the market.

• DefiLlama tracks the stablecoin market at $315.304 billion in total supply across all chains as of June 22, 2026.
• USDT (Tether) leads the stablecoin market at $186.194 billion with 59.05% dominance, per DefiLlama.
• USDC (Circle) holds $74.892 billion in supply as the second-largest dollar stablecoin.
• Sky Dollar (USDS) reached $8.161 billion in supply, extending the position MakerDAO tracked before the Sky rebrand.
• Within on-chain borrowing channels, lending applications carry more than 80% of activity, with CDP stablecoins holding just 16%.
• Bitcoin served as the primary collateral asset across protocols through Q3 2025, lifting DeFi loans $14.52 billion quarter over quarter, per Galaxy Research.

Why it matters: The borrowing side runs on dollar-pegged stablecoins, which means every cycle of crypto leverage is also a vote of confidence in stablecoin reserves. A stablecoin shock would cascade through both lending channels.

Lending Rates: BTC OTC Near 1%, Stablecoin Rates Track Fed Funds

Galaxy Research’s quarterly tracking shows lending rates anchored to traditional benchmarks, particularly the Federal Reserve’s federal funds rate.

• Stablecoin lending rates and CDP minting rates closely followed the U.S. Federal Reserve’s federal funds rate as a lower bound over the 18 months ending Q4 2025.
• BTC OTC lending rates fell by 25 basis points in Q4 2025 to approximately 1%, per Galaxy Research’s quarterly update.
• DeFi lending applications generated $21.6 million in seven-day fees and $4.68 million in revenue across the lending category, per DefiLlama on June 22, 2026.
• Aave alone produced $6.89 million in seven-day fees and $930,606 in revenue at the protocol level.

Worth noting: Crypto borrowing rates no longer trade in isolation from traditional finance. Professional desks compare crypto leverage to short-dated Treasuries before allocating capital, which means rate cycles in Washington now move crypto borrowing demand, not just digital asset prices on the spot side of the market.

The 2022-2023 Collapse: How CeFi Lost 82% of Its Book

Four CeFi giants (Genesis, Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager) filed for bankruptcy between mid-2022 and January 2023, taking crypto hedge funds and counterparties down with them.

• The crypto lending market (excluding CDP stablecoins) peaked at $48.4 billion in open borrows at the end of Q4 2021, per Galaxy Research.
• The cumulative market hit its trough four quarters later in Q4 2022 at $9.6 billion, an 80% decline from the top.
• Total CeFi lending fell from a peak of $34.8 billion to roughly $6.4 billion, an 82% collapse, per Galaxy Research.
• Genesis carried a peak loan book as large as $14.6 billion before its January 2023 bankruptcy filing.
• BlockFi held approximately $14.7 billion of investors’ assets as of March 31, 2021, including roughly $10.4 billion in BlockFi Interest Accounts, per the SEC.
• Including CDP stablecoins, the total market topped $64.4 billion in Q4 2021, fell an estimated 78% to $14.2 billion in Q3 2023, and rebounded approximately 157% to $36.5 billion by Q4 2024.

Source: SEC press releases 2022-26 and 2023-7, Galaxy Research historical reconstruction

SEC Enforcement: $100 Million BlockFi Settlement, Genesis Charged

The SEC built much of the current crypto-lending registration framework through enforcement, not rulemaking. Two settlements in particular shaped how surviving lenders operate.

• BlockFi agreed on February 14, 2022, to pay $100 million in total penalties, split as a $50 million SEC penalty and $50 million to 32 states.
• The SEC found BlockFi had failed to register the offers and sales of its retail crypto lending product, BlockFi Interest Accounts (BIAs), which began on March 4, 2019.
• BlockFi held approximately $10.4 billion in BIAs as of March 31, 2021, the SEC said.
• The SEC charged Genesis Global Capital and Gemini Trust Company on January 12, 2023, over the unregistered Gemini Earn lending program.
• The complaint alleged Genesis and Gemini raised billions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets from hundreds of thousands of investors starting in February 2021.
• The Gemini Earn agreement was reached between Genesis and Gemini in December 2020, under which Gemini acted as agent and Genesis paid interest.

Every CeFi lender in the current Q3 2025 top three either operates against accredited and institutional clients only or registers its retail products.

Loan-to-Value Ratios and Liquidation Mechanics

Loan-to-value (LTV) ratios sit at the center of every crypto lending decision. They define how much a borrower can take against a given collateral asset before liquidation engines step in.

• Aave’s risk parameters are managed by the Aave DAO governance, with per-asset supply caps, borrow caps, and liquidation thresholds set across more than 20 EVM and L2 deployments.
• Aave’s protocol-wide borrowed-to-supplied ratio sits near approximately 79% based on $10.063 billion borrowed against $12.728 billion supplied, per DefiLlama.
• CeFi OTC arrangements set bespoke loan-to-value, maturity, and interest terms on a bilateral basis between accredited counterparties.
• On-chain lending is fully transparent and auditable, operating 24 hours per day, seven days per week, across a wide range of collateral assets.

The takeaway: The most important number for any borrower is the liquidation threshold on the asset they posted, not the headline APY on idle supply. Aave governance sets the LTV ceiling per asset; Compound and Morpho do the same with different curve shapes. Mis-calibrating LTV is how 2022 borrowers lost the most when the collateral crashed.

How big is the crypto lending market?

Galaxy Research recorded the all-time crypto lending high at $73.59 billion at the end of Q3 2025, split into $40.99 billion in DeFi and $24.37 billion in CeFi. Q4 2025 cooled about 10% on falling DeFi asset prices, per Galaxy. DefiLlama’s live DeFi-only lending category sits at $37.382 billion in TVL, with weekly fees of $21.6 million across the category as of June 22, 2026.

What is the difference between CeFi and DeFi crypto lending?

CeFi lenders operate as centralized off-chain financial companies and split into three subtypes: OTC desks, prime brokerages, and on-chain private credit pools, with bespoke loan-to-value, maturity, and interest terms. DeFi lending runs on smart-contract applications that operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week, with publicly auditable books and algorithmic liquidation. Per Galaxy Research, on-chain channels now hold 66.9% of all crypto-collateralized borrowing, up from 48.6% at the 2021 peak.

Why did Celsius, BlockFi, and Genesis fail?

Galaxy Research traces the approximately 78% combined market collapse from the 2022 peak to the bear-market trough to a chain of liquidity events: the Terra UST depeg, the stETH depeg, and Grayscale’s GBTC trading below net asset value. The SEC separately charged BlockFi with failing to register its BlockFi Interest Accounts, which held approximately $10.4 billion in investor assets in February 2022, and charged Genesis and Gemini in January 2023 over the unregistered Gemini Earn program.

Conclusion

Crypto lending is no longer the same product since the 2022 collapse. Galaxy Research recorded a $73.59 billion all-time high in Q3 2025, with on-chain protocols carrying 66.9% of the total, and CeFi survivors now run fully collateralized books. DefiLlama’s live snapshot shows Aave leading the DeFi category at $12.728 billion in TVL and $10.063 billion in active borrows, while Tether anchors CeFi with $14.6 billion in secured loans and a 59.91% market share.

Watch the CeFi top three, the DefiLlama TVL line, and the dollar-pegged stablecoin reserves: those three series will signal when the next leg of the cycle begins.