Non-Custodial Bitcoin Lending with Surge (Yash Belavadi, Michael Borglin) | Built in the Presidio

Show Notes

In the second installment of Built in the Presidio, we sit down with Presidio Bitcoin members Yash Belavadi (Co-founder & CEO) and Michael Borglin (CPO) of Surge, a team building a trust-minimized, non-custodial way to borrow against Bitcoin. We start with why Bitcoin lending keeps reverting to opaque custodians and why these models repeatedly blow up, plus why truly Bitcoin-aligned lending has been so difficult to crack. Then we unpack what’s recently changed - technical primitives, market maturity, and institutional tailwinds - along with Surge's unique approach. Yash and Michael walk through Surge’s high-level architecture, including the role of a distributed custody network, variable vs fixed-rate markets, and what the product feels like for a normal user. We end with the roadmap and core challenges: solving the cold-start liquidity loop while keeping the system verifiable and Bitcoin-native. Timestamps 0:00 Why Bitcoin lending keeps breaking 1:50 Yash & Michael's backgrounds and pivot into Bitcoin lending 6:30 Why past models failed 13:00 Why now? (regulatory & institutional momentum) 25:35 What Surge is building: roadmap, liquidity bootstrapping, native BTC 31:00 How it works: user journey & safety Learn more about Surge: https://www.surge.credit/ Learn more about Presidio Bitcoin: https://www.presidiobitcoin.org/