Ledn is a Canadian company that allows users to borrow, save and trade digital assets (e.g USDC and Bitcoin). They are a registered Money Services Business in the Canada (FINTRAC) and the US (FINCEN).
Signing Up
The sign up process was very quick and easy. You will need to go through their KYC and AML process in order to access their services. The amount of information requested is similar to signing up for a bank account and given that they are a registered Money Services Business, it isn’t a surprise that you need to go through this process.
Security
Ledn has a wide range of features to ensure further security of your account.
The first feature is two-factor authentication (2FA). This makes it so that you will need a second layer of security to login (in addition to password). They have two options for 2FA – TOTP (Time-based one-time password) or SMS authentication.
TOTP is the recommended 2FA option to use. This could include using Google authenticator or Yubikey. This limits any ability for hackers to sim-swap your phone number and get access to your account.
SMS authentication is the second 2FA option. It’s an added layer of security to limit hackers from guessing your password.
Another much welcomed security feature is anti-phishing phrase. As Ledn puts it “Anti-phishing phrases are used to protect you from malicious actors impersonating Ledn. To help you identify legitimate emails from Ledn, each email will contain your anti-phishing phrase in the header.”
Products
Ledn offers 3 main products: Borrow, Save and Trade.
BTC Savings
Ledn offers 5.25% interest on your Bitcoin. It is quite easy to deposit your Bitcoin to your Ledn wallet. Just click “Deposit” and you will be shown a Bitcoin wallet address. Once the Bitcoin is in your wallet, you will start receiving interest.
Transactions sent to your Bitcoin Savings Account will be posted after 1 confirmation. This process usually takes about 10 minutes depending on the transaction fee and the Bitcoin network traffic
USDC Savings
Ledn offers a 8.00% interest rate for USDC. Make sure that you are sending USDC on ERC-20 orelse your stablecoins could be lost.
Loans
Ledn offers B2X loans as well as Dollar loans. B2X loans allow you to get 2X your Bitcoin holdings by depositing Bitcoin as collateral. The current annual interest rate is 8.9% with a 2% admin fee. There is a super easy to use calculator to see how much Bitcoin you’ll get back after depositing.
They also offer Bicoin-backed Dollar loans. You can deposit Bitcoin and receive a loan in either USD or USDC. They have a 50% loan-to-value (meaning every 1 Bitcoin you deposit, you will get to take out 0.5 Bitcoin worth of USD/USDC). The interest rate is the same 8.9% annual interest and a 10.9% APR.
Trade
Lastly, Ledn offers an exchange for USDC <> Bitcoin. However, this is only available in select countries.
Is Ledn a Scam?
According to Crunchbase, Ledn has raised over $103.9M since their founding in 2018. They’re funded by some well known VCs in the industry. They are also a registered MSB in Canada, which is an important step to take to become a legitimate financial company in Canada. As such, it does not seem like Ledn is a scam.
How To Fund
Funding can be done using Bitcoin or USDC. The easiest way to fund your Ledn account is to fund using PayTrie. This is the most direct way to fund your Ledn account using Interac e-Transfer.
To fund your account, you would first need to set up an account at www.paytrie.com
Once you’ve gone through the set up process, you can choose the amount that you would like to send to Ledn. So for example, if you would like to send $2500 CAD, you would end up with 1971.59 USDC. This rate will change according to the exchange rate of CAD to USD and also according to the gas prices. You can save some money by timing your purchase when gas prices are lower.
Once you’ve clicked Swap, you will need to enter your Ledn wallet address. Make sure you double check the wallet address to make sure it matches with the wallet address that Ledn provides. You can also choose to leave the “Add some ETH to this transaction” box unchecked.
Next, PayTrie will send a Request Money Transfer to your email requesting the amount you’ve booked (in this case $2500). You just need to log in your bank account and choose accept. Once the eTransfer arrives at PayTrie, the USDC will be sent directly to Ledn. They say that the first transaction can take up to 24 hours, my first transaction took a little longer than an hour. Subsequent transactions have taken less than an hour.
Once the USDC is in your Ledn account, you can choose to start earning interest, or trade for Bitcoin and start earning interest/borrow off the Bitcoin.
Conclusion
Ledn is an easy way for Canadians to do more with their Bitcoin and USDC. I like that they’re a Canadian company and fully registered with FINTRAC Canada. I also like to see that they offer Saving, Borrowing and Trading products. Although it’s only limited to Bitcoin and USDC, I find that it’s enough to get started.
