5
min read
Firefish Q1 2026: A Word From The CEO
Published 16/4/2026
Before I get into the numbers, a quick note from me.
I've been in this industry long enough to know that quarterly recaps usually sound the same: a tidy list of wins, wrapped in a bow. This one is different — because Q1 2026 was the quarter that actually tested whether the architecture we've spent years building holds up under pressure. It did. And I want to walk you through it in my own words, because I think the detail matters more than the headlines.
A lot happened between January and March. Firefish entered the quarter as a MiCA-authorized platform, launched USDT-denominated loans, crossed a loan milestone only Bitcoiners will fully appreciate, got its market data integrated into LSEG Workspace, published a technical paper on Discreet Log Contracts, laid out its full security architecture in public, and continued to improve the UI experience for users. We even have a fully-functional Firefish widget now.
Three months is a long time in Bitcoin. The past quarter just proved that. Bitcoin dropped from above $90,000 at the start of Q1 to the $60,000 levels, its lowest since October 2024. Over 4,800 users topped up their collateral. The architecture worked as designed. We published the full breakdown.
This is what all of it looked like up close from my seat 👇
Interest Rates Hit a Year-Low
A few weeks into the year, something more interesting showed up in the platform data. EUR loan rates had dropped 27% since mid-2025, with 12-month loans sitting below 9.5% APR — the most affordable level in over a year. And the reason wasn't a policy decision or a promotional rate on our side; it was simply more lenders competing for the same loans, which is exactly what a P2P marketplace is supposed to produce.
No intervention. No announcement. Just the model working as intended. That's the part I'm proudest of.
Login to your dashboard to see the latest rates.
Borrow Up to €50,000 Instantly
The borrowing cap for Instant Loans has been raised to €50,000, or 50,000 USDT against Bitcoin collateral.
For anyone unfamiliar with how Instant Loans work on Firefish: unlike Marketplace Loans where borrowers set their own terms and wait for a lender to fund, Instant Loans use pre-defined terms set by the investor. The rate is automatically set to secure immediate funding. Fixed rates, guaranteed funding, fastest turnaround on the platform at around one day. The tradeoff is less control over the rate. The upside is speed and certainty.
Raising the cap to €50,000 didn't change any of that. It just made the product available to a wider range of borrowing needs — something our users have been asking us about for months.
USDT Loans Go Live
The headline product launch of the quarter, and one we took our time with. Borrowers can now take out loans denominated in USDT against Bitcoin collateral. The core mechanics are unchanged: 3-of-3 multisig escrow, overcollateralized, non-custodial. The collateral architecture is the same. The loan currency is broader.
Here's everything you need to know about USDT loans on Firefish.
The Numbers
Some milestones speak for themselves. In Q1, Firefish crossed 21,021 loans originated — and if you know why that number lands differently than 21,000, you understand the community this platform was built for. The choice of number was not accidental.
The platform also crossed 5,000 BTC in collateralized Bitcoin, with over 27,000 users across 70+ countries active on the platform.
The Stress Test
On February 6, 2026, Bitcoin fell to its lowest level since October 2024. I won't pretend I wasn't watching the dashboards carefully that day — any CEO who says otherwise isn't being honest. Here's the full picture of how Firefish responded:
1.7% of processed loans triggered margin calls
0.6% of all platform users were affected by these alerts
4,800+ users proactively topped up collateral in the preceding 7 days
~$2.5M USD was liquidated across the platform
98.3% of users never came close to margin calls. By design, every Firefish loan starts at 50% LTV, creating 45 percentage points of buffer before reaching liquidation at 95%.
Every liquidation happened at the disclosed 95% LTV threshold. The system provided three margin call warnings before liquidation, giving users time to add collateral or reduce their loan.
This correction showed us what works and what needs improvement. We're building infrastructure that survives real market conditions — and that means learning from every stress test, not just celebrating the ones we pass.
How We Think About Security
In March, we published a full breakdown of how Firefish is built from a security perspective. This is a topic I care about personally — partly because it's the thing that keeps me up at night, and partly because I think the industry doesn't talk about it honestly enough.
Our blog post "How We Think About Security at Firefish" laid out the six layers behind the platform: cryptographic collateral protection, public source code, external auditing through AISLE (founded by former Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek), Rust as the development language, FIDO2 hardware keys for internal access, and operations security.
Bitcoin Credit Is No Longer Invisible to the Institutional Audience. It Has a Ticker.
Firefish's Bitcoin credit rate data is now distributed through LSEG Workspace, the analytics platform sitting on the desks of over 400,000 financial professionals globally, making Firefish the only Bitcoin-backed lending platform integrated into that infrastructure. A portfolio manager in London, a fixed income analyst in Singapore, a family office in Zurich — they can now pull Bitcoin-backed lending rates as part of their standard daily workflow.
For me, this was a quiet milestone that I think matters more than most people realize. Here's the coverage on Bitcoin News.
The DLC Technical Paper
Our team published a technical paper on Discreet Log Contracts. DLCs are the cryptographic mechanism underlying Firefish's escrow model, and they rarely get explained outside of developer circles. The paper covered:
Why DLCs are more private and scalable
The cryptographic foundation making it possible
How anticipation points and attestations work
History of DLCs
Multiple oracles and numerical optimizations
More recently, we just published a follow-up to this challenging the view on DLCs getting presented as a natural building block for non-custodial Bitcoin-backed lending.
MiCA Authorization
At the start of the year, Firefish became a MiCA-authorized platform. To be clear about where I stand: I don't see MiCA as progress for Bitcoin. What it gives us is clarity — a framework to operate in Europe. That's useful, even if it comes with more overhead.
Importantly, nothing about the product changed. No wrapping BTC, no shortcuts, no moving away from a Bitcoin-native design. That part wasn't negotiable for us.
Firefish's authorization is publicly listed in the ESMA Interim MiCA Register under Crypto-Asset Service Providers.
Referral Program
In March, we kicked off our referral program. As a referrer, you can earn 0.5% annual commission on loans originated through your unique link (get it here), paid monthly in Bitcoin, doubling to 1.0% when both borrower and lender use the same referral code.
New users you refer get zero fees on their first loan.
The program runs through April 30th.
Our users have earned 7 BTC from our referral program so far.
In Conclusion
That's Q1. Regulated, stress-tested, and more accessible than it was in December of 2025. If you've been watching from the sidelines, our user César Tánchez put it well in a March Trustpilot review: "Innovative today, but it will be the standard in the near future." I'll take that.
Get your Bitcoin-backed loan here.
New to Bitcoin-backed lending? The Firefish YouTube channel covers everything from the basics to the mechanics behind the escrow.
Here's our most popular video recently, hosting Roman Reher (Blocktrainer) and Alberto Mera (Un Podcast Sobre Bitcoin) — two of the most influential Bitcoin-only educators in the German and Spanish-speaking world.
Talk soon,
