Ordinary lending is a tug-of-war. The Lender wants to earn more; the Borrower wants to pay less. For one side to win, the other has to lose.
Alice changes the shape of the deal. By adding a small, measured Bitcoin layer to an otherwise ordinary real estate loan, the same transaction can leave the Lender earning more — a higher yield, and the upside of a genuinely different asset — and the Borrower paying less, through a lower rate while carrying no Bitcoin risk of its own. The pie grows, rather than being fought over.
Institutions face two conventional choices: buy Bitcoin directly and take on the scrutiny that comes with it, or ignore it and miss the asymmetry. Alice offers a third path.
Bitcoin has matured into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class, and institutional adoption keeps accelerating. Allocators increasingly ask how to gain exposure, not whether to.
Direct purchase triggers custody questions, accounting treatment, and a politically charged board conversation. For most institutions that path stays structurally fraught.
You have capital to deploy. Do you lend it at a fixed yield, or buy a volatile asset with uncertain returns? Today it feels like one or the other.
Its appeal to long-term allocators is not simply that it has risen. It is that its risk and return drivers are largely detached from the forces that move stocks and bonds.
Capped at 21 million units and slowing every four years. Unlike currencies, it cannot be debased to meet a deficit.
No central issuer and no single country's fortunes behind it, which is why it behaves differently from traditional risk assets over long horizons.
Over a ten-year window its correlation to equities has been low, closer to gold than to stocks, even through short bursts of co-movement.
Over the last decade it returned roughly 70% a year, outperforming every major asset class in eight of those ten years.
The honest caveat: that same decade included two drawdowns of more than 50%, and in two of the ten years Bitcoin was the worst-performing asset of the lot. It is volatile and still maturing — which is exactly why the structure holds it in a small, ring-fenced layer, never as the foundation of the loan. (Approximate figures, last ten years; past performance does not guarantee future results.)
Every Alice deal is a normal, fully-secured real estate loan with a small Bitcoin layer on top. Think of the money as splitting into two parts.
The Borrower receives a commercial real estate loan, secured against the property exactly as in any ordinary deal. This is the overwhelming majority of the capital and behaves like normal lending in every respect.
A small, measured slice buys Bitcoin at the start of the loan. A licensed, regulated custodian holds it for the whole term — so it sits off the Lender's balance sheet while the loan runs.
When the loan ends, the Bitcoin is sold and the proceeds are split by an agreement written into the escrow at the outset — no discretion, no surprise. Who receives what depends on the Deal Type chosen.
The Alice ecosystem brings together three kinds of participant — Lenders, Borrowers (typically represented by their brokers), and Risk Takers who want Bitcoin exposure and are willing to carry the risk for it. The same Bitcoin layer can be arranged three ways, depending on which of them take part and who carries the Bitcoin. Alice is the neutral marketplace that connects them — providing the legal, custody, and escrow rails, and taking a small toll on the Bitcoin at settlement.
The Lender funds the whole loan and keeps the Bitcoin — held off its balance sheet by the custodian for the term — taking the full net upside after Alice's toll, in exchange for offering the Borrower a lower rate. The Lender carries the Bitcoin downside.
A Risk Taker carries the Bitcoin layer and pays a premium, taking the Bitcoin upside and its downside within agreed limits. The Lender sees an ordinary, yield-enhanced mortgage with no Bitcoin exposure; the Borrower pays less.
No Lender. A Risk Taker and the Borrower deal directly: the Risk Taker carries the Bitcoin layer and pays the Borrower a premium, in exchange for the Bitcoin.
A representative ten-million-dollar loan, side by side: ordinary lending versus the same loan with Alice's Bitcoin layer. These figures are fixed for illustration.
The loan's own interest is earned either way; the figures above are the difference Alice makes, after the discount passed to the Borrower, the cost of carrying the Bitcoin tranche, and the platform and transaction costs of arranging the deal. In this Lender & Borrower structure the Lender keeps the full net Bitcoin upside and the Borrower's benefit is the rate saving. Illustrative only, using representative assumptions (6.25% market rate, 4.0% cost of funds, $100,000 Bitcoin price, a 5% Bitcoin layer, a 2.5% settlement toll on the Bitcoin taken in kind).
The same representative loan under four Bitcoin outcomes over five years, including a total wipe-out. We would rather over-disclose than oversell.
Even here the loan interest still comes in — the Lender's profit falls from $861,498 to $177,975 but stays positive, and the Borrower keeps the rate saving.
Well below Bitcoin's historical average. The Lender's yield is enhanced by the Bitcoin upside, and the Borrower keeps the rate saving regardless of how Bitcoin performs.
Still below the long-run average. The Bitcoin layer meaningfully lifts the Lender's return; the Borrower's saving is unchanged and certain.
Bitcoin has compounded at this pace over multiple multi-year stretches. If it repeats, the Lender's upside is substantial; the Borrower keeps its fixed rate saving.
Total Lender profit on the representative loan, against the $861,498 an ordinary loan would earn.
Other risks worth naming plainly. Bitcoin is volatile and can fall sharply and stay there; in the worst case the Lender does meaningfully worse than an ordinary loan. The structure depends on a regulated custodian performing its duties. Regulatory and tax treatment continue to evolve and vary by party and jurisdiction. None of this is investment, legal, or tax advice.
You've seen the shape of the deal. Choose where to go from here — explore the three deal types, run your own figures, or get in touch.
It comes down to who wants the Bitcoin upside, and who's willing to pay for it.
An at-a-glance map of how each structure performs across market conditions and deal terms. Switch structures and views inside the map.
Questions, a deal to explore, or simply want to learn more? Send us a note.