ether.fi told its followers on October 31 that users have now borrowed a cumulative $150 million against their crypto through the platform without selling any of it. The number came in a short post from the project's official X account, which called non-liquidating loans the whole point of the product. As of October 31, 2026, that $150 million is a running total of everything borrowed against collateral, not a single-month figure.
Borrowing stands in for selling at the register
ether.fi lets holders of ETH and its staked variants, including eETH and weETH, take a loan against those assets instead of cashing them out. The collateral keeps earning staking yield while it sits as backing, and the loan is not wound down on a fixed schedule as long as the position stays above its liquidation level. ether.fi markets this as borrowing without selling, and the $150 million figure is how much has moved through that function.
ether.fi Cash runs on the same collateral
The ether.fi Cash Visa is built on that mechanism. Rather than pulling from a prepaid fiat balance, the card can draw on borrowed stablecoins backed by your collateral, so a coffee or a flight does not force a taxable sale of ETH. The assets stay in user-controlled, self-custodial accounts, and the free Core card pays 3% back on the first $2,000 of monthly spend before the rate steps down. Higher membership levels lift both the cashback band and the amount of collateral needed to reach them.
The liquidation math behind "nobody had to sell"
"Not a single person had to sell" describes the mechanism, not a guarantee. Borrowing against a volatile asset carries liquidation risk. If ETH falls far enough, the collateral can be sold out from under the position to cover the loan, which is the exact outcome the pitch is built to avoid. The staking yield on the collateral offsets part of the borrowing cost, but it does not cap the downside of a sharp price drop. Foreign spending is not free either. ether.fi's card runs on Visa's roughly 1% base conversion rate plus a tier-based margin of up to 0.5%, so the all-in cost is cheaper than most rivals rather than zero.
Overview
ether.fi's $150 million borrowing milestone is a traction marker for its collateral-backed model, not a change to card terms, fees, or availability. For cardholders, the takeaway holds steady: the ether.fi Cash Visa funds spending from loans against your crypto, which keeps the upside and avoids a forced sale, as long as your collateral holds its value. Anyone leaning on that model should know their own liquidation threshold before they treat borrowed funds as spending money.
