From our founder, Shehzan.
My parents grew up in poverty in the slums of India. After I was born, they had the opportunity to emigrate to America in search of a better life. Here, they worked 20-hour days, plus nights and weekends, first in odd jobs and later on through their own businesses. This process was challenging— as they struggled to earn money and build wealth for our family, they faced another battle they didn’t even know they were fighting: how to save that money.
In today’s financial system, saving has become needlessly complex. Inflation and money printing erode wealth, forcing everyone to become investors just to preserve their money. It’s no longer enough to focus on your work—you also have to figure out how to grow your savings. The fiat system has replaced true saving with speculation, robbing people of their most valuable asset: their time.
Bitcoin fixes this. As the first global, truly scarce asset, bitcoin can go beyond being just a store of value, it can become the very definition of saving. This is the next chapter for bitcoin. It started as a collectible, and today, it’s mostly used for speculation. But it’s future is as a savings vehicle, and Lava is building for that future.
I wasn’t originally planning to start Lava. I just wanted a way to save in bitcoin and spend in dollars that I could use and that I could share with my family and community. But when I looked around and saw no one was building what I needed, I decided I had to build it myself.
Lava’s core vision is simple: most people just want to maximize their savings. In a world where bitcoin defines saving, Lava is the best way for people saving in bitcoin to grow their holdings securely. Borrowing is one of the most powerful strategies to grow your bitcoin holdings because it enables you to unlock your bitcoin without having to sell. Lava’s borrowers have been unable to unlock liquidity on their savings and fund major purchases in their lives without incurring taxable events and without giving up their bitcoin exposure. As a result, they now have more bitcoin than they would if they had sold. Lava’s users have borrowed against their bitcoin to purchase homes, cars, vacations, college tuition, life-changing surgeries, and much more.
This is just the start for us. We’ve built the best team in the industry, and we’re backed by the best investors in the world. Our mission is to build the world’s most trusted financial institution— powered by bitcoin, the best savings asset— to help people achieve better financial outcomes.
Thanks for being on this journey with us.