Crypto-backed loan provider APX Lending has secured a $20 million accordion facility from Cypress Hills, a private credit investment firm.
An accordion facility is a provision that allows a borrower to increase their borrowing without renegotiating the entire agreement. In effect, it expands like an accordion.
Toronto-based APX, which offers lending with digital assets as collateral, plans to use the facility to accelerate its expansion in Canada to meet rising demands for crypto-backed loans, according to an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk on Friday.
“This accordion facility from Cypress Hills marks a major step forward in our mission to make crypto-backed loans transparent, secure, and accessible to Canadians,” founder and CEO Andrei Poliakov said in the announcement.
APX received exemptive relief from the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) at the start of this month, exempting it from certain registration and prospectus requirements, which the firm said “would address investor concerns in [a] retail context.”
The exemption was granted “based on the particular facts and circumstances of the application with the objective of fostering innovative businesses in Canada,” according to a note on the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) website.
Digital asset lending has a somewhat chequered history, with various lenders collapsing amid the onset of the crypto winter in 2022. However, the now more favorable regulatory attitude to crypto in the U.S. could help transform it into a vibrant and competitive market, according to another crypto lender Ledn’s co-founder Mauricio Di Bartolomeo.
Di Bartolomeo predicted that Washington’s friendlier approach to crypto would help rates fall, the effect of which would be evident beyond the U.S.
“Gold in a vault in Switzerland is not gold in a vault in Venezuela, but bitcoin in Colombia is bitcoin in Madrid is bitcoin anywhere in the world,” he told CoinDesk in a recent interview.
Andrei Poliakov will be speaking at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 in Toronto on May 14-15.