How Billionaires Borrow Millions Without Banks (And You Can Too)
From 10 BTC to $6 Million
As you know, I’m obsessed with podcasts. But what I enjoy most about them isn’t just listening to them, which I do, but observing the point of view of people far smarter than me, people who have done things right, just like when I read books. The other day, I was listening to one where a guy worth more than a billion dollars, one of those who appear on the Forbes Billionaires list, said something that really made me think: if your company doesn’t show revenue, it’s impossible to get funding.
And I kept thinking about it. Because while that sentence makes sense in the twentieth century, I’m not so sure it does in the twenty-first.
What has happened so far is curious. Only the companies that have had access to credit, that is, that the bank decided to lend money to, have been able to scale massively. But if you’re a small business, with no contacts and no guarantees, and you can’t get financing, then scaling millions becomes an almost impossible mission. The conflict of interest is brutal. If you bribe the banker, the banker gives you money, you return favors, and everyone wins… until the citizen ends up paying for the bank bailout when it all blows up.
And then I thought, this sounds ancient. Archaic. Almost feudal.
Today, access to financial meritocracy is more real than ever. If you have facts, not promises but real, digital, liquid assets, you can already prove solvency without asking anyone’s permission.
I started looking for alternatives in the online world. And there are more and more. Protocols that let you use your assets as collateral, deposit your Bitcoin or Ether, and borrow against them. No intermediaries. No need to “please” the banker. No need to play the financial theater of projections, polished balance sheets, and manipulated audits.
If you think about it, this is exactly what a company does when it reinvests its profits. It borrows to buy back its own assets, betting that those assets will appreciate faster than the interest rate it pays on the loan. It’s intelligent leverage. It’s conviction. And above all, it’s freedom.
We are entering an era where any asset can be tokenized. Stocks, indexes, real estate, even invoices or cashflows. Everything can be represented digitally and used as collateral. And that completely changes the credit game. Because now, you don’t depend on a bank for funding. You depend on the market. On the trust you build through your actions.
Banks won’t disappear, of course. They still hold the power of fractional reserves and traditional credit creation. But the difference now is that the individual can become their own bank.
For example, you can deposit your bitcoins in a protocol like Aave, in their wrapped version, borrow against them, and reinvest again. No bribes, no connections. It’s a system that rewards responsibility and punishes recklessness in real time.
It reminded me of something Michael Saylor often says: “The more money I have, the more money I can borrow.” And he’s absolutely right. But the difference between the old and the new model is that, for the first time, this is accessible to anyone with digital assets. You don’t need a Wall Street surname. If you hold 10 bitcoins, you can borrow far more than you have in liquidity, and use it strategically.