Altitude is winding down. First, the part we're proud of. In over two years of Altitude being live, Altitude was never hacked and never exploited. We never lost a cent of user funds. We never had a drawdown. We generated around $245,000 in yield for our users, and we grew to $30 million in total deposits. Every position stayed safe, the whole way through. The reason we're stopping is simpler and harder. We had very loyal users who genuinely loved the product. Just not enough of them. Without more deposits, the protocol didn't earn enough in fees to sustain itself. We tried a lot of ways to close that gap. In the end the numbers didn't work, and running a protocol that holds people's money on thin margins is not something we were willing to do. As we’re winding down, we ask you to please close your positions and move your funds out. Now the thank yous, and I mean every one of them. To the team who built Altitude: you built something that worked, safely, for years, in a space where that is rare. I could not have asked for more from you. To our investors: thank you for backing us and for trusting us with your capital and your belief. It didn't end the way any of us wanted, and I'm grateful all the same. And most of all, to the hundreds of you who used Altitude and trusted the protocol with your funds: thank you. You are the reason we built it, and the reason our safety record mattered as much to us as it did. We never took that trust lightly, not for a single day. I’m proud of what we built together, and sad to close it. Thank you, all of you. @tobiasvanamstel, Co-founder & CEO, Altitude

Institutions are here, and they are getting onboarded to DeFi. Times may be dark at the moment, but it's all battle-testing the current infrastructure, preparing it for the next wave of investors. Thanks to @Flight3official for shooting the video. 🙏

We are not affected by the Kelp DAO exploit. User funds are safe. We're aware of the concerns around rsETH being used as collateral on Aave V3 and the potential for bad debt contagion. Our vaults are not borrowing from Aave, so we have no exposure there. We are monitoring the situation closely and will take action if needed. Thoughts with the Kelp team. Hope they're able to contain the damage.

Next stop: Paris. We'll be at @signalweek on April 15 and 16. The stomping grounds of Ledger, Circle and more top teams that are building what's next in crypto. We're there to meet friends, find new partnerships, investors and talk to BTC and ETH holders who'd rather borrow against their assets than sell them. That's exactly who Altitude is built for. @tobiasvanamstel & @smopschoor will be there. If you're going, come say hi.

Long-term BTC holder who needs liquidity has two options. 1. Sell and trigger a tax event, close the position, and watch the price from the sidelines. 2. Borrow against it. Keep the position. Access the cash. Set a low LTV so liquidation is nowhere near current price. Altitude handles the rest. The loan pays itself down over time.

Wealthy investors do not liquidate assets to fund their lifestyle. They borrow against them at low rates. The asset keeps appreciating. The loan gets serviced. Net worth climbs. This mechanic is now available on-chain to anyone with a crypto position worth borrowing against.

Before putting capital into any DeFi protocol, go deep. Learn how it operates. Where assets are held. Whether the code has been independently audited, more than once. Who is actually behind it. The more you know before you act, the better you sleep after.

You could manage your own DeFi loan. Monitor rates across protocols. Refinance manually when something cheaper appears. Deploy idle collateral into yield. Track it all yourself. Or you take a loan through Altitude and let it do that.

That’s why selling is not an option. Just borrow and grow the pie.

DeFi borrowing on Ethereum involves more variables than most people account for. Rates differ across protocols and shift with utilization. Staying on the best rate means monitoring multiple platforms and refinancing manually when something changes. Altitude aggregates across the leading lending protocols, routes your loan to the lowest available rate, and refinances automatically when rates move. You hold the loan. Altitude manages where it sits.

We are not affected by the USR depeg and user funds are safe. We pulled funds from the Gauntlet vault as a precaution and are monitoring the situation. Thoughts with the Resolv team since this is a tough situation and we hope they're able to recover.

The fundamental question is who controls your assets, a legal agreement with a company or software rules written in form of smart contracts. With centralized lenders, your collateral goes onto their balance sheet. You rely on their solvency and honesty. With DeFi, smart contracts govern access. Pay back the loan and you can pull your collateral at any time. Neither option is automatically safer. The devil is in the details of each specific setup.

Selling = giving up your position. Borrowing = keeping it. Liquidity shouldn't cost you the upside. Borrow. Keep Exposure.

We didn't reinvent the wheel. We asked a different question: what's missing on top of the infrastructure that already works? Proven DeFi yield protocols already existed. Morpho and Aave had already processed billions, been audited, and earned their track record. We just saw an opportunity to put them to work in a way that hadn't been done yet. Your collateral goes onto those protocols. Your unused borrow capacity gets deployed into low-risk yield. That yield pays down your loan. Automatically. No manual rate hunting. No watching liquidation thresholds. No managing multiple positions across protocols. That's the consumer app we're building. Not new rails. The existing ones, finally made simple enough that you can take a loan and sleep well at night.

Selling ETH to cover expenses triggers a taxable event. Borrowing against it does not (in most jurisdictions). That gap matters more the longer you’ve held the asset and the more it has appreciated. For long-term holders, accessing liquidity via borrowing is often the cleaner move on paper.