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Get a Bird Loan
Using Supply and Borrow on our Lending Platform

## What is a Bird Loan?

Like all DeFi loans, Bird loans allow users to use crypto assets as collateral to borrow additional funds.
Unlike any other DeFi loans, Bird treats every borrower uniquely. Our lending platform allows the best borrowers greater access to capital.

## What is collateral?

Collateral is just fancy finance speak for a guarantee that you'll pay back any money you've borrowed. When you take out a home mortgage, your collateral is the house. Crypto loans are even easier because the crypto tokens you already have are your collateral.
The amount you can borrow is determined by your collateral ratio. Your collateral ratio is calculated as:
$Loan Amount / Collateral Amount$
This means that if the value of your collateral asset decreases, your collateral ratio will increase. If it increases too much, your loan can be liquidated. If your loan is liquidated, the asset you supplied as collateral is seized and used to repay the amount you borrowed and did not repay. This is how all DeFi loans work.

## How do I get a Bird loan?

Bird loans are made for everyone. Getting one is easy. Here's how:
Before taking flight, make sure you have ETH in your wallet to pay the gas fees associated with receiving a Bird loan.

### Step 1: Fly over to the Bird Lending App

Bird.Money | Non-Custodial Digital Asset Lending Platform

### Step 2: Connect your wallet

Currently, only Metamask and WalletConnect wallets are supported. When you arrive at the app, you'll be prompted to connect. If not, just click the "Connect Wallet" button in the upper left.
To change wallets, select the new wallet in the Metamask UI. The app will then automatically refresh to connect to the new wallet.

### Step 3: Connect to Ethereum Mainnet

Check that Metamask (or WalletConnect) is connected to the correct network. If it isn't, you'll likely see a message like this:
To connect to the mainnet, click the network button on Metamask.
Then select "Ethereum Mainnet".

### Step 4: Enable an asset as collateral

When supplying an asset as collateral for the first time, you'll first need to approve that asset for spending. This is the same process you've likely experienced when using Uniswap and other web3 apps. To approve an asset, click the slider bar next to that asset under the "Supply Markets" section.
You'll then be prompted to this asset as collateral. This happens by sending a transaction using Metamask. To do this, click the "Use ____ as Collateral" collateral button. In this example, we're enabling ETH.
When approving collateral and supplying or withdrawing collateral, you can check the status of a pending transaction within the Metamask interface. Check the Metamask docs for more information.
Any assets that have been approved will show a red check in the slider and slide to the right. Here we've approved ETH

### Step 5: Supply collateral

Supplying collateral is the last step before you'll be able to receive a Bird loan. The value of the collateral you supply will determine the maximum amount you can borrow.
To supply collateral you must first have approved that asset as collateral (see the previous step). Once that's done, simply click the asset under the "Supply Markets" section, enter the amount you wish to use as collateral, then click "Supply".
If the supply doesn't appear and shows No Funds Available, then try deleting few decimals.
You'll then be prompted to approve the transaction in Metamask.

### Step 6: Borrow assets against your supplied collateral

You made it! You're ready to receive a Bird loan. Wasn't too hard, right? Now that you've supplied collateral, you'll see a few changes in the Bird Lending App interface. In the dashboard on the left, you'll see the value of the collateral you supplied and the borrow limit your collateral allows.
In this example, $182 of supplied collateral allows up to$136 in borrowing. Next, click the asset you wish to borrow from the "Borrow Markets" on the right.
A screen to configure your loan will appear next. First, make sure you've selected the "Borrow" toggle and not the "Repay" toggle under the borrow amount field. Next, enter the amount you wish to borrow. Finally, click the "Borrow" button at the bottom of the screen.
You'll then be prompted to approve the transaction in Metamask. That's it! Once the transaction is confirmed, you will have received your first Bird Loan!
Use the "SAFE MAX" button to automatically populate the borrow amount field with a borrow amount equal to 80% of your total limit.

## Where is My Loan?

Like most DeFi projects, every step you just took can be tracked on the blockchain. Let's have a look.

### Enable Asset as Collateral

This transaction typically requires the lowest gas fee of all transactions required to issue a Bird loan. You only need to enable each asset one time for a given account.
The transaction will appear as a 0 ETH transfer.
If you switch to the Logs view on Etherscan, you'll see that it was a call to the "MarketEntered" function for one of Bird's smart contracts.

### Supply Collateral to the Platform

When supplying collateral, you're actually transferring custody of that collateral to Bird's smart contracts and receiving 'bTokens' in exchange.
Because you're sending tokens to a smart contract, they'll appear in the transaction. In our example, the 0.1 ETH has been transferred and 5 bETH has been returned.
You can also see the bTokens you're currently holding if you click the "Tokens" drop-down on your account page in Etherscan.

### Borrow Action

When your loan is originated, you'll see the amount reflected in your total balance for that asset. To see the transfer, you'll either need to review the "Internal Txns" tab or the "Erc20 Token Txns" tab on Etherscan. Since the loan in this example was issued in ETH, we can see the transfer on the "Internal Txns" tab. The value matches the loan amount.