BitNile to Lend Up to $100M to Small Businesses Backed by Bitcoin

The new lending program will be offered via a platform called Ault Lending that is designed to lend to publicly traded companies that are under $250 million in market capitalization, according to a statement.

BitNile plans to hold up to $100 million of self-mined bitcoin in reserve to back the expansion of the lending program. The loans will range from $1 million to $25 million.

The lending program will allow the borrower to repay the debts using various methods including cash, bitcoin, or, in the case of convertible promissory notes, common stock of the borrower.

The lending program is designed to use bitcoin layer three technology, in partnership with decentralized finance (DeFi) startup, Earnity, to offer smart contracts to participating companies and is also expected to allow participating companies to borrow against their bitcoin holdings.

BitNile plans to significantly expand its bitcoin mining production capacity this year, growing its number of mining rigs to 20,600, representing an expected mining production capacity of approximately 2.24 exahashes per second (EH/s).