The First Spreadsheet I'd Build If I Started a Crypto Lending Business Today
Before building a loan book or revenue model, every crypto lending founder should build a liquidity tracker. Learn why liquidity management is the foundation of a sustainable lending business.
6/7/2026
Many entrepreneurs assume the first spreadsheet a crypto lending business needs is a loan management system.
It isn't.
Others start by building interest calculators, customer onboarding trackers, or liquidation models.
Those are important eventually, but they wouldn't be my first priority.
If I were launching a crypto lending business from scratch today, the very first spreadsheet I'd build would be a liquidity and obligations tracker. It's the spreadsheet most likely to keep the business alive.
The Biggest Mistake Crypto Lenders Make
Most lending businesses spend a lot of time thinking about assets.
How much collateral is held. What loan-to-value ratios are being offered. What yields can be earned. What interest rates borrowers are willing to pay.
Far fewer spend enough time thinking about liabilities.
Who can withdraw funds tomorrow? How much capital is actually liquid? What happens if multiple large clients request redemptions at the same time? Can assets be converted to cash quickly without creating losses?
These questions don't generate headlines during bull markets, but they become critical during bear markets.
Many crypto lenders that failed during previous market cycles collapsed because they couldn't meet obligations when capital became trapped, counterparties froze withdrawals, or customers wanted their money back simultaneously.
That's a liquidity problem, not a lending problem.
What This Spreadsheet Would Track
The goal isn't complexity, but visibility.
At any moment, I would want to know exactly where every dollar of capital sits and how quickly it can be accessed.
The spreadsheet would separate assets into different liquidity buckets. Cash and stablecoins available immediately would sit in one category. Funds held on exchanges might sit in another. Assets deployed into lending strategies, staking positions, DeFi protocols, or third-party counterparties would each have their own classification.
The key question is how much capital can be accessed today, tomorrow, next week, and next month.
On the liability side, I'd track all obligations: Customer deposits, institutional funding, loan facilities, expected withdrawals and concentrated accounts.
Anything capable of creating a cash demand on the business.
Once both sides are visible, patterns begin to emerge.
You can quickly identify maturity mismatches, concentration risks, and potential liquidity gaps before they become emergencies.
Why This Matters More Than Revenue Projections
Early-stage founders often focus heavily on growth forecasts.
How many borrowers can be acquired? How much revenue will the business generate? What does profitability look like?
Those are important questions, but a business can survive slower growth.
It usually cannot survive a liquidity crisis.
A lender with modest growth and strong liquidity management will often outperform a lender chasing aggressive yields with weak controls.
The history of crypto lending is filled with examples of businesses that generated impressive returns right up until the moment liquidity disappeared.
The businesses that endure are typically the ones that understand where their capital is, what obligations exist, and how quickly conditions can change.
The Spreadsheet Eventually Becomes a System
As the business grows, this simple liquidity tracker evolves. Additional models are layered on top. Stress testing scenarios, counterparty exposure analysis, liquidation threshold monitoring, treasury allocation decisions, risk policy frameworks.
What begins as a single spreadsheet eventually becomes an operational risk management system.
The challenge is that most founders don't know where to start building those tools.
That's one of the reasons I created the Crypto Lending Operations and Risk Suite.
The suite contains the same types of operational frameworks, stress testing models, treasury tools, risk templates, and management dashboards that many lending businesses eventually need as they scale.
Rather than spending months building everything from scratch, founders can start with proven frameworks and customize them to fit their own business model.
If I were starting a crypto lending company today, I wouldn't begin with a loan book. I wouldn't begin with a revenue forecast. I wouldn't begin with a marketing plan. I'd begin with a spreadsheet that tells me exactly where my capital is, exactly what I owe, and exactly how long I can meet those obligations under stress.
Because in crypto lending, survival isn't determined by how much you lend. It's determined by whether you can stay liquid when everyone else is trying to do the same thing.