Imagine a crypto millionaire who owns a chalet in St. Moritz, a house in Switzerland and a beach residence in Miami — roughly $10 million in net worth — but wants a short-term line of credit to fund ski days, a Cannes trip and yacht upgrades without selling their crypto. Traditional private banks will often balk at using crypto as collateral, and many wealthy crypto holders are reluctant to liquidate their positions and trigger taxes. Enter DeFi-backed lending, a fast-growing workaround that’s making it easier for the ultra-rich to finance lifestyles without exiting their digital holdings.
Crypto millionaires on the rise
There’s growing demand for these services: a Henley & Partners 2025 survey found 241,700 crypto millionaires worldwide — a 40% jump from the previous year. For family offices and high-net-worth individuals sitting on large crypto positions, the question isn’t lack of wealth but how to tap it efficiently for short-term spending.
How DeFi fills the gap
Jerome de Tychey, founder of Cometh — a DeFi-for-business facilitator and one of the few French firms to secure a MiCA licence — explains the basic route: native crypto holders can supply assets like ether (ETH $2,937.59) to lending markets such as Aave and borrow stablecoins, or move USDC to protocols like Morpho or provide ETH–BTC liquidity on Uniswap. “This is still a bit too complicated and too sophisticated for the layman,” he told attendees at the CfC St Moritz conference, noting that firms like his help family offices access credit lines without forcing asset sales.
Why wealthy clients prefer collateralized loans
Wealthy clients commonly use Lombard (collateral) loans in traditional finance — short-term, flexible credit secured by stocks, bonds or portfolios, which lets them access cash without realizing capital gains or losing dividend income. The DeFi alternative performs a similar role but with several notable differences:
- Speed: A crypto-backed loan can be executed in seconds on some platforms; a Lombard loan through a private bank may take up to seven days.
- Simplicity of credit checks: DeFi is often permissionless — code enforces the terms and doesn’t require credit checks, tax returns or lengthy KYC in some setups, which can appeal to privacy-seeking clients.
- Accessibility: For crypto-native users, the steps are straightforward (supply collateral, borrow stablecoins). For traditional wealth managers, the process can be complex, creating demand for intermediaries.
Trade-offs and risks
DeFi lending isn’t risk-free. Loans are exposed to price volatility and counterparty risks embedded in smart contracts. Sudden drops in collateral value can trigger automatic liquidations enforced by code — a far cry from the negotiated flexibility of private-bank loans. Those trade-offs are central to the decision for clients weighing speed and convenience against stability and tailored oversight.
Cometh’s bridging strategy: MiCA and ‘tradfi-cation’ of DeFi
With a MiCA licence under its belt, Cometh is also exploring ways to bring traditional securities into the DeFi-style lending stack. De Tychey described work to use International Securities Identification Numbers (ISIN) to enable stocks, bonds and derivatives to secure debt — effectively tokenizing titles held in dedicated funds. For example, to access debt using an account holding Tesla shares, ISIN-based tokens would need to be held in a dedicated fund linked to a private debt product.
“We are looking at these sorts of approaches done through dedicated private debt products that anyone with a title account can access,” he said, calling it a “tradfi-cation” of DeFi — applying decentralized primitives to traditional financial instruments while keeping regulatory and institutional safeguards.
What this means for the wealthy
For crypto-native millionaires and family offices, DeFi can unlock liquidity quickly and privately, funding everything from luxury travel to yacht refits without forcing taxable disposals. For wealth managers and traditional firms, the trend is pushing an evolution: either integrate DeFi tools or build regulated bridges that translate tokenized and non-tokenized assets into credit products clients trust.
The result is a growing market of hybrid offerings that blend DeFi speed and innovation with the regulatory compliance and familiar structures that high-net-worth clients expect — letting crypto fortunes bankroll real-world indulgences without a trip to the sell button.
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