Bitcoin is a bearer asset and that one fact should change how you think about every loan you take against it.
Whoever can sign for Bitcoin owns it. No chargeback, no recovery department, no court that reverses a spend. So the moment you post it as collateral and sign it into a lender's custody, ownership has effectively moved. That's not a flaw in any single lender. It's the nature of the asset.
Now layer on the standard terms. Most Bitcoin loans run around 50% LTV, you borrow a dollar against two dollars of BTC. You're over-collateralized by design, which means the asset you've handed into someone else's control is worth materially more than the money you walked away with.
So the question that matters isn't "will they treat me fairly while they're running." Most lenders are legit and will. It's this:
🚨 If they go down, you still have your borrowed dollars, but what happens to the Bitcoin, the part that's worth more than the loan? 🚨
That's the exposure nobody quotes you. Your dollars are already in your pocket. Your collateral, the larger number sits in a custody arrangement that quietly assumes the lender keeps existing. A withdrawal portal doesn't change that: a portal is a permission, and permissions need someone alive to grant them.
A real answer can't live in a terms-of-service doc. It has to live in Bitcoin itself, a spending path on your collateral that returns it to you, and only you, even if the lender and everyone coordinating it is gone. Script as the final authority, not the company's survival.
It's a hard standard, and it's the one we built Surge around. But the question belongs to you wherever you borrow. You gave up custody of the larger asset, make sure you know exactly how you get it back.
Don't trust. Verify. 🟧
