Maple Finance Launch?a new financing vehicle with $300 million for miners?mostly public and private mid-size bitcoin mining firms.?Australia-based and North American-based qualified entities that meet the treasury management and power plans standards may apply for funding. 

Decentralized finance company Maple Finance along with its delegate Icebreaker Finance, an Australian company, announced that they are providing secured debt financing of $300 million capacity for mid-size bitcoin miners in North America and Australia.  

The loans will have a term of 12 to 18 months and interest rates of 15% to 20%, which are high but not unheard of for the mining sector. According to a news release, Icebreaker Finance will manage the pool with the goal of providing accredited investors and capital allocators with "risk-adjusted returns" in the low teens. 

The initiative also aims to offer investors and capital allocators risk-adjusted returns in the low teen percentages which is up to 13% annually. Only accredited investors who meet strict income and/or net worth requirements within a country are permitted access to the pool. In the United States, among other requirements, this entails possessing a liquid net worth of more than $1 million or a yearly pre-tax income of over $200,000 or $300,000 with a spouse. 

An official press release described the pool as a lending pool aimed at lending to blue-chip companies across the country with effective treasury management and prudent power strategies. The pool aims to lend to prestigious private and public companies across the United States.  

Since uncollateralized loans to market makers and other crypto enterprises are Maple's bread and butter, this is the first fully-collateralized loan product for a particular industry area, according to a Maple spokeswoman. 

Because of the decline in the price of bitcoin and the sharp increase in energy costs this year, it has become more challenging for bitcoin miners to raise funds. New funders, like Maple, are attempting to fill the hole left by the drying up of traditional sources of funding.  

A partner of Bitmain, the largest maker of mining rigs, Antalpha launched innovative loan instruments for bitcoin miners in July. Miners hoping to survive the bear market have begun debt restructurings and acquisitions in the meanwhile. 

According to the statement, since the first pool was introduced in May 2021, the liquidity pools on the Maple platform have made loans totaling about $1.8 billion, giving Maple a 50% share of the institutional DeFi lending market. In addition to expanding its lending services to financial technology firms, Maple intends to develop more loan pools for the expanding mining industry.