Financial institutions are foraying into Bitcoin-backed lending as Bitcoin (BTC) adoption gains steam among investment managers and fiat interest rates tighten, Ledn, a Bitcoin-backed lending platform, told Cointelegraph on Sept. 25. Institutional investors have poured billions of dollars into spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) after United States regulators cleared the cryptocurrency funds for trading in January. “[M]ajor institutions are now going beyond ETFs to focus on Bitcoin-backed lending,” Ledn said. Ledn processed $1.16 billion in cryptocurrency loans in the first half of 2024, lar…