In Largest-ever NFT-backed Loan, 101 CryptoPunks Put Up as Collateral

Blockworks Exclusive: The loan has an APR of 10% with a 30-day duration

article-image

Source: MetaStreet

share

key takeaways

  • The loan was completed by NFT liquidity scaling startup MetaStreet on lending platform NFTfi
  • “By having an active borrowing and lending market [in NFTs], you create productive assets that are otherwise viewed as unproductive,” Conor Moore, co-founder of MetaStreet, told Blockworks

In what has been billed as the largest-ever NFT-backed loan, an anonymous borrower just took out an $8 million loan collateralized by their collection of 101 CryptoPunks.

The loan has an APR of 10% and a 30-day duration. It was facilitated by liquidity scaling solution MetaStreet on peer-to-peer lending platform NFTfi.

The financing is seen by industry participants as a bellwether of the future of lending secured by digital collectibles — a market expected to grow as institutional interest in the sector continues to build.

Conor Moore, co-founder and chief operating officer of MetaStreet, told Blockworks the loan is “orders of magnitude larger” than previous NFT (non-fungible token) financing. MetaStreet helped to complete another record-breaking loan last year — a $1.42 million loan collateralized by an Autoglyph.

Moore did not disclose the identity of the borrower, who he referred to as “whale,” or someone who holds large amounts of cryptocurrency.

MetaStreet, which has eight full-time employees, secured $3 million in seed financing and $11 million in initial protocol liquidity earlier this year. The firm provides a layer of financial infrastructure to NFTs, specifically lending protocols such as NFTfi and Arcade.

“It’s sort of like how Fannie Mae works in the US housing market. You’ve got a big aggregation vehicle through which originators can sell loans that then get batched up and split into different tranches,” Moore said. “Those different tranches allow for more optimal capital efficiency.”

NFT collectors, co-founder and CEO of MetaStreet David Choi said, want to free up capital more efficiently and don’t want their cryptoassets to accumulate “virtual dust.”

“I think [NFT] borrowing markets will just grow bigger and bigger, which means its purchasing power will increase,” Choi said. “It’s like instead of putting all of your money into buying a house, you get a mortgage, which means you don’t have to pay that 90% until later. [With MetaStreet], I think we’re extending the purchasing power of the entire industry.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (10).png

Research

Kamino has evolved into a full-stack asset scaling suite with V2: unlocking new markets, improving capital efficiency, and catering to various risk profiles. We believe it is best positioned to become the credit backbone of Solana as the ecosystem matures. Simply put, KMNO remains our highest-conviction bet in the Solana ecosystem. This report lays out our thesis.

article-image

EigenCloud wants to make crypto-economic guarantees a plug-and-play primitive

article-image

In a new letter, Gemini alleges that the CFTC’s DOE had ulterior motives for 2022 suit

article-image

Sponsored

Neitec’s Debita platform is closing the credit gap by unlocking high-yield private debt in markets that need it most

article-image

From bank porters to stablecoins, the history of money is a story of acceleration

article-image

The Byreal DEX will use both centralized and decentralized liquidity sources to route trades

article-image

Last week’s solana ETF amendments points to “some sort of push from the SEC to get things organized,” a person familiar tells Blockworks.