Zac Prince, Founder and CEO, BlockFi

This episode of The Scoop, The Block's interview podcast hosted by Frank Chaparro, features Zac Prince, co-founder and CEO of BlockFi, discussing the rapid growth of his crypto lending platform and the broader case for interest-bearing crypto products. 

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BlockFi launched in 2017 offering interest accounts and crypto-backed loans, letting holders earn yield on bitcoin and ether or borrow against their holdings without selling, and by mid-2019 the company was in the middle of a significant expansion phase. Earlier that year, BlockFi had closed a Series A funding round led by Galaxy Digital, and the company was reporting fast growth in both assets on its platform and the size of its loan book as crypto prices recovered from the 2018 downturn.

The episode lands at a moment when crypto lending was emerging as one of the more tangible use cases to come out of the bear market, giving long-term holders a way to generate income or access liquidity without triggering a taxable sale. Prince and Chaparro discuss how BlockFi built trust with both retail and institutional clients around custody and counterparty risk, an especially sensitive topic given the collapses and hacks that had shaken confidence in parts of the industry. They talk through the mechanics of how BlockFi generates the yield it pays depositors, largely by lending assets to institutional borrowers and trading firms, and how the company managed the spread between what it earns on loans and what it pays savers.

The conversation also covers competitive dynamics as other lending platforms and exchanges began rolling out similar products, regulatory questions facing yield-bearing crypto accounts, and Prince's view on how demand for BlockFi's products reflected a broader shift toward institutional-style financial services built for digital assets. Prince also shares his outlook on where crypto lending fits as the market matures beyond speculative trading. The interview captures BlockFi at an early inflection point, before crypto lending became a much larger and more contested corner of the industry in the years that followed.