COINBASE NOW LENDS AGAINST BITCOIN AT A FIXED RATE — THE LOAN COMES DUE THE LAST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH — THE FED JUST HIKED

Coinbase added fixed-rate loans on September 22: borrow USDC against your bitcoin at a rate that does not move, through Morpho Midnight, a lending protocol that went live on Coinbase’s Base network in July, per The Block. Lenders and borrowers set the rate by placing offers on an onchain order book. For now the loans come due at the end of this month or next, defined as “the last Friday of the month.” Jacob Frantz, Coinbase’s yield and investments product lead: “Coinbase Borrow gives our customers access to liquidity without having to sell their assets.”

The timing is the pitch. The Fed raised rates on September 16 for the first time since 2023, and a fixed rate is worth more when rates are climbing. Coinbase’s older variable-rate loans already have more than $1.4 billion outstanding against roughly $3 billion in collateral.

Read the plumbing before the rate. When Coinbase launched bitcoin-backed loans in January 2025, The Block reported the collateral “is converted 1:1 into Coinbase-wrapped bitcoin (cbBTC)” and sent to Morpho. So the bitcoin you post was first swapped for Coinbase’s own token that stands for bitcoin. The new story does not say whether the fixed-rate loans work the same way. It does say that if a loan goes unpaid, “the lender has a claim on the collateral.” A loan with a due date is a clock. Borrowing instead of selling works for whoever can roll the loan on the last Friday, not for whoever has to find the dollars. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $86,294.