Centralized crypto lending loan books fell 6% in Q1 2026 to $23.3 billion, marking the sector’s first quarterly contraction since Q3 2024. Tether remains dominant, but Maple, Nexo and Coinbase gained share as Galaxy and Ledn saw the steepest pullbacks.
Key Takeaways:
CeFi loan books fell 6% to $23.3B in Q1 2026, ending growth since Q3 2024.Tether held a 68% share, while Maple, Nexo, and Coinbase gained market share.Galaxy and Ledn shrank the most, signaling selective growth in crypto lending.Tether stayed far ahead of the sector, with a $15.8 billion loan book and 68% market share. That dominance held despite a 7% decline in its lending book during the quarter.
Maple Finance ranked second with $2.1 billion in loans and 9% market share. Nexo followed with $1.8 billion and 8% share. Coinbase and Galaxy Digital each held about 6%, while bitcoin-backed lender Ledn accounted for 3%.
The quarter’s data show a lending market moving through controlled deleveraging rather than a sudden credit shock.
Loan books contracted across most of the sector. Galaxy Digital saw the sharpest decline among major lenders, with its book falling 21% quarter over quarter. Ledn followed with a 19% drop.
Tether’s 7% decline was smaller in percentage terms, but more meaningful in dollar terms because of its scale. Even after the pullback, its loan book remained larger than all other tracked CeFi lenders combined.
Not every lender moved lower.
Coinbase and Maple each expanded their loan books by roughly 6% in Q1. Nexo also grew, though more modestly, with an increase of nearly 1%. They were the only major lenders in the covered group to report loan book growth during the quarter.
Those gains translated into market-share shifts. Maple added 1 percentage point, Nexo gained 0.5 percentage points, and Coinbase added 0.7 percentage points.
By contrast, Galaxy lost 1.1 percentage points of market share, while Tether slipped 0.7 percentage points.
The result is a sector still heavily concentrated around Tether, but with incremental gains going to platforms that continued lending through the downturn. Maple’s rise also points to growing institutional demand for structured onchain credit, while Coinbase’s expansion reflects its broader push into financial services around custody, trading and collateralized products.
The first-quarter contraction does not signal the end of CeFi lending. It does show that growth is becoming more selective. In a weaker market, lenders with stronger distribution, clearer collateral controls, and institutional relationships are gaining share while more exposed balance sheets shrink.
