The Story of a Borrower: ORAX Assets Management 🇵🇦

Some of you might have been surprised when we listed a Bitcoin mining company on the platform. So, let us tell you a story behind it.

As some of you may remember, we attended Token2049 last year. We interviewed people there, discussed a lot of things with founders and investors, and of course built some valuable connections.

During the conference, our CCO Ivan Marchena met Goran Jovanovic, the founder of ORAX Assets Management.

Goran has been a Bitcoin enthusiast since 2011 and previously invested in publicly listed mining companies such as Bitfarms and other sector peers. Over the years, he developed a strong understanding of the industry — from power costs and uptime management to firmware optimisation and disciplined capital allocation.

At the time, he told us he was planning to move from financial exposure to building his own physical mining operation, and that he was interested in scaling the business.

After the conference, Ivan and Goran exchanged contacts.

A few months later, our team had a call with Goran. By that time, he had already secured land and a grid connection in Paraguay, negotiated a three-year fixed-price power contract, and completed the design of the initial 2 MW mining infrastructure.

We discussed the project and decided to wait and observe how the company performed once operations started.

Closer to 2026, we scheduled another call to review the progress. By then, ORAX had already demonstrated strong gross and operating margins, even at an early stage, confirming the economic viability of the 2 MW setup under the current power tariff and network conditions.

At that point, we saw the company was ready to scale. Following this, Maclear AG began a full audit. The team reviewed ORAX’s financial performance, collateral, BTC production metrics, and other key criteria.

✅ Once the audit was completed and all checks were confirmed, we finalized the financial preparations, secured the collateral, and in January 2026 listed ORAX Assets Management on 8lends.

That is exactly why attending international conferences is so important.

They let you to meet founders, discover real businesses, and build partnerships that can turn into real opportunities later.

🔈 AMA in Telegram With Special Guest!

Topic: German precision — how to build a business, invest wisely, and not lose your mind along the way.

✨ Our special guest today is Tillmann Schlegel from Germany.

He is the CEO of one of the largest headhunting companies in the country, where top companies find top IT specialists. The company operates five offices across three countries. Tillmann originally founded it together with partners, later bought out their shares, and today he is the sole shareholder.

💎 Besides running his business, Tillmann invests in real estate and luxury watches, sold his Bitcoin at $120,000, has lived in Colombia, and is currently studying Buddhism.

🤩 Join us today at 15:00 CET

See you right here!

4 Loss Cases Every Investor Should Know ❗️

Some frauds and Ponzi schemes may feel distant to many investors because they didn’t lose money in them, and because many of these events happened years ago.

But history tends to repeat itself. Most large financial collapses reveal the same mistakes that retail investors keep making.

Let’s look at some of the most famous examples 👇

🔘 LTCM: “Geniuses” With 30:1 Leverage

Long-Term Capital Management was a hedge fund with Nobel Prize winners on its board, annual returns of about 40%, and a reputation as “the smartest money on Wall Street.”

The strategy relied on arbitrage with extremely small spreads, amplified by massive leverage — up to $30 of debt for every $1 of equity.

When Russia defaulted in 1998 and markets moved unexpectedly, LTCM suffered huge losses and had to be rescued by a consortium of banks coordinated by the Federal Reserve.

Main mistake: Blind trust in reputation combined with extreme leverage. Always DYOR before investing.

🔘 Archegos: Hidden Leverage

Archegos Capital was a family office run by Bill Hwang. Through total return swaps, it secretly built enormous positions in a small group of stocks such as ViacomCBS, Baidu, etc.

Because these positions were hidden through derivatives, several banks unknowingly provided massive leverage. When the market moved against the fund in March 2021, margin calls began. Archegos failed to meet them, forcing banks to liquidate positions.

The result: More than $10 billion in losses for major banks such as Credit Suisse and Nomura.

Main mistake: Extreme leverage combined with heavy concentration in a few assets.

🔘 Terra / UST: The “Risk-Free” 20% Yield

Most of you probably remember this crash because it happened in 2022 and pushed crypto into years of bear market.

Terra promised an algorithmic stablecoin called UST and around 20% annual yield through the Anchor protocol. At one point, up to 75% of all UST was deposited there.

But when the mechanism that kept the dollar peg could no longer handle the liquidity outflow, the house of cards started falling: UST lost its peg, LUNA collapsed to nearly zero, and investor losses reached tens of billions of dollars.

Main mistake: Believing in a “guaranteed 20%” without understanding the mechanics behind it.

🔘 FTX: The Story of a “Reliable Exchange”

FTX was once the third-largest crypto exchange in the world, serving millions of clients and valued at around $32 billion.

In November 2022, it was revealed that the exchange had been using customer funds to cover losses at its affiliated trading firm, Alameda Research.

After a wave of withdrawals, a hole of about $8 billion appeared. FTX collapsed, and hundreds of thousands of clients were left with frozen assets. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.

Main mistake: Ignoring counterparty risk storing large amounts on a centralized platform just because “everyone uses it.”

All these stories have something in common:

🔘 Excessive leverage
🔘 Putting everything into one instrument, platform, or idea
🔘 Blind belief in reputation and branding
🔘 Not understanding how the income is actually generated
🔘 Ignoring possible worst-case scenarios

Such schemes may evolve, and that's the problem. Retail investors should adapt and learn from history to save their own money. We highly recommend you DYOR before investing.

Who knows, maybe another crypto house of cards will fall soon as well.

$8LNDS Is Available for Purchase! 🤩

However, the purchase opportunity is limited. Here's how it works:

In the $8LNDS Token section on our website, users can not only sell their tokens but also buy new ones. The amount available for purchase is tied to your investments in projects.

❗️ You can buy tokens in the amount of up to 6% of the total investment you have made in projects.

When you enter the amount you want to spend, the platform will show the estimated amount of $8LNDS you will receive.

🦄 All purchases are executed through the Uniswap liquidity pool, which means every purchase contributes to increasing the token price.

Example:

If you invested 10,000 USDC, you'll receive:

🔘 6% of your investment in $8LNDS tokens, which will be unlocked weekly over a 10-month period (Proof of Loan).
🔘 6% quota (600 USDC worth) to buy more 8LNDS tokens immediately, with no vesting.

How do you like this feature? Have you already bought some $8LNDS?

Let us know in the comments! 🗯️

AI: The Most Beautiful Bubble of Our Aeon ✨

In 2025, AI swallowed almost 50% of the global venture market, about $202 billion. In 2024, it was 34%. Many believe this is the future. The next technological revolution.

So, let’s break it all down 👇

🔘 “AI” adds +300 to your valuation

In 2024, venture investments in AI exceeded $100 billion, growing 80% in a single year. About one-third of all venture capital moved into AI.

At the same time, many so-called AI-fintech products are just collections of AI agents running predefined prompts, while users pay monthly for something they could easily build themselves.

📢 Veteran venture capitalist Alan Patricof, an early investor in companies such as Apple, said this:

Everybody is rushing to put AI at the end of their name or brand to make a marketing effect. Some indication that they're playing in this game that, like everybody else. So we've seen not just Google but whether it's Microsoft or Apple or hundreds of other companies that are pouring lots of money in, and when you have that happen, there are going to be winners and losers, and probably fewer winners and a lot more losers.

🔘 And who are going to be the winners?

The real winners are likely to be Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Apple. Because they've already invested more than $1.6 trillion into AI, which is more than the cost of building the atomic bomb, landing humans on the Moon, and the 75,550 km US interstate highway network.

They’re building data centers, chips, energy infrastructure, and computing capacity. In other words, real assets that generate real cash flow. The rest is mostly marketing.

🔘 The market loves the AI narrative.

The S&P 500 crossed the 7,000-point mark for the first time, driven by unrelenting optimism over AI and expectations of strong Big Tech earnings as well as monetary policy easing.

The further it goes, the more AI startups come to us asking for funds to scale. But once we start the audit, we see that there are no real collateral, no clear data, and no results. Only speculation over the AI narrative.

We work differently, we build a business with our own hands, we ask difficult questions, we say "no" and explain the reasons.

Because investors' money has to be in real deals, helping scale real businesses, but not popular narratives.

The Story of a Borrower: BPM LTD DOOEL 🇲🇰

This is the first business from Macedonia that we’ve listed on 8lends, and the fact that we’re scaling globally makes our team genuinely happy, and we hope you feel the same!

Before we get into how we met, let us jog your memory about the company itself: BPM LTD DOOEL Skopje is a B2B food trading and distribution company based in Skopje, North Macedonia.

They source food products in one country and sell them to businesses in another, managing the entire process in between. Their focus is South-East Europe, a region where logistics isn’t just about moving goods, but about speed, temperature control, and getting the paperwork right.

Now let's dive into the story 👇

By the end of 2025, their team reached out to Aleksandr Lang (Co-Founder of Maclear AG). They were looking for funding to scale their operations, initially considering Maclear. As always, we asked them to send documents that would tell us more about financials, business model, and growth plan.

By that point, they had already achieved strong results:

🔘 Revenue in 2024: €509,780
🔘 Revenue in 2025: €1,709,820
🔘 Gross profit in 2024: €179,902
🔘 Gross profit in 2025: €379,922

Forecast for 2026:

🔘 Revenue: €5,598,320
🔘 Gross profit: €952,274

They shared their growth plan, and the overall picture looked solid. So we scheduled a call to go deeper into details — collateral, audit process, timelines.

During that call, we introduced 8lends and offered something slightly different: instead of going through Maclear, we suggested listing on 8lends. Maclear is our parent company, but we're actively scaling our Web3 platform, and bringing in a new geography like Macedonia was exactly the kind of opportunity we were looking for.

They took some time to explore the platform. Meanwhile, our team moved forward with the audit.

About a week later, they came back with a decision to proceed with listing on 8lends.

Once Maclear completed the audit and we finalized the preparation, BPM LTD DOOEL was officially listed on the platform.

This story shows us that Maclear has built a strong reputation in Web2. But more and more businesses are recognizing the potential of Web3, and choosing to move in that direction.

Because together, 8lends and Maclear form a perfect bridge between the two worlds.

🔈 Space: Tokenizing the Real World: Is AI the Missing Link for RWA Adoption?

Everyone's talking about AI, and a lot of people feel it's going to be a game-changer in the near future.

But let's take a look at AI from another angle: can it help drive RWA adoption?

We’ll break it down today 👇

🔘 Date: March 19, 2026
🔘 Time: 12:00 PM UTC
🔘 Host: AILayer

See you there!

Who should invest in P2P lending?

📈 The European P2P lending market reached €3.2 billion in 2025, and some estimates suggest it could grow to $30.54 billion by 2032.

But not everyone fully understands what it is and how it works. And the truth is P2P lending isn’t for everyone.

🙄 Who won’t like P2P lending?

Those who are used to crypto volatility. If one has been trading altcoins, memecoins, or Bitcoin for a long time, the pace of P2P lending will likely feel too slow.

P2P lending isn't about getting rich in one bull cycle. You won’t make $20 while waiting for your coffee, but you also won’t lose everything in an hour.

P2P lending is a source of passive income. People come here for steady, reliable returns in the first place. If you invest in P2P lending, you don't wait for quick results; you build capital slowly but surely.

🤩 Who would like P2P lending?

People who are tired of uncertainty, panic, and constant volatility. If patience is your middle name, and you don't rush things to see results here and now, this market is a great fit for you.

🥇 Most platforms here offer 6-12% APR, while we're operating in the 18–25% range on average. Why? Because we're a Web3 platform, which helps us to cut middlemen and a lot of steps that require extra commissions and fees.

🥇 We pay monthly. That means you can reinvest regularly and compound your returns in USDC and $8LNDS.

P2P lending offers something most markets don’t — structure and protection.

🔘 Every loan is backed by real collateral
🔘 Every transaction is recorded on-chain
🔘 The process is legally secured

To sum up, P2P lending is slower, but much more secure, and the probability of losing money here is much, much lower than it is in crypto or stocks.

So, the choice is up to you:

❤️ — P2P lending only
🔥 — Crypto and stocks
👍 — Diversification across both options

Do you follow 8lends on X? 🤩

If you're still not, you know what to do:

✖ x.com/eightlends

🔈 The List of Spaces This Week

This post includes all key info about the Spaces/AMAs we’ve prepared for you. If you missed something or need a link to join, just come back to this post.

1. Space with WOLF Financial

Should Crypto Become Boring to Grow Up?

🔘 March 24 at 6 PM CET
🔘 Link: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1RJjpzOpWBQKw

RWA and tokenization might be the next step for crypto to finally mature into a serious asset class.

Right now, the market is flooded with memecoins and empty altcoins.

2. Panel discussion with 4AI

From Prompt to Profit: Monetizing Intelligence On-Chain + RWAs

🔘 Date: March 27 at 12 PM UTC
🔘 Link: Will be added later

We’ll cover the hottest topics of the year: AI, RWA, and DeFi.

Will AI change how people interact with RWAs and DeFi, or not?

Got something to say? Join us 😉