New York, New York, February 26th, 2025,
Chainwire
Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2 activating Bitcoin DeFi, today
announced a series of major institutions adopting sBTC for their
Bitcoin strategy. sBTC, a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed,
decentralized programmable asset, has attracted significant
interest from major institutions and industry leaders since its
December 2024 mainnet launch, signaling a strong position in the
tokenized BTC asset landscape.
Early depositors participating in sBTC’s first cap included
UTXO, SNZ, Jump Crypto, and many more. Early demand for sBTC
resulted in a second cap raise that tripled capacity for deposits.
This cap was met less than 24 hours after its February 25th
opening, ushering in the latest wave of builders, institutions,
wealth managers, and retail investors to access sBTC. One
rapidly-growing sBTC use case, Zest, has already amassed nearly 40%
of all sBTC in the protocol, demonstrating usability and
productivity for bitcoin. With growing support from depositors and
builders and continued technical progress, sBTC’s next milestone
will be its withdrawal functionality, which is expected to arrive
in March 2025.
As of February 2025, the demand for tokenized Bitcoin assets has
been steadily growing. This demand is driven by bitcoin holders who
are beginning to recognize Bitcoin layers like Stacks and others
can offer solutions aligned with the promise of Bitcoin security.
According to BBA
data, Tokenized BTC supply has reached 1.67% of BTC's
circulating supply, a level not seen since October 2022.
”The growing adoption of sBTC provides essential liquidity for
developers building and scaling applications,” said Alex Miller,
CEO of Hiro. “We’ve already seen builders using our developer tools
adopt sBTC to deliver solutions like native bitcoin yield
generation, lending, borrowing, DEXs, and scaling of L1 activities
like Runes and Ordinals. I predict that next we’ll see more
innovation of these use cases, as well as new ideas through AI
agents and more.”
Among tokenized assets, sBTC is a versatile solution, enabling
flexible smart contracts and transactions that leverage Bitcoin's
security and irreversibility. sBTC is uniquely ushering in fully
activated capital for BTC holders instead of solely staking or
locking BTC on the L1.
“We look for technologies that unlock latent capital and expand
potential use cases for Bitcoin,” said Saurabh Sharma, at Jump
Trading. “sBTC fosters a more dynamic and interconnected financial
landscape, and we are pleased to participate in the ecosystem.”
Early sBTC Depositors Include:
- UTXO Management: UTXO Management
is a major player in the Bitcoin ecosystem and has invested in many
of the top Bitcoin companies through their venture arm. 210k
Capital, their liquid fund, deploys capital across Bitcoin-related
investment opportunities in public and private markets.
- Jump Crypto: Jump Crypto is part of
the Jump Trading Group, a research-driven quantitative trading firm
and one of the largest traders, by volume, across asset classes.
Jump Crypto is also a key infrastructure builder and R&D
contributor to the crypto ecosystem and is excited about the
prospects of Web3 and blockchain technology to revolutionize open,
community-driven networks.
- CMS Holdings: CMS Holdings invests
in liquid and illiquid crypto tokens as well as taking equity
stakes in select companies. CMS is an active investor in the
Bitcoin ecosystem, participating in venture deals for companies
contributing to scaling Bitcoin.
- RootstockLabs: RootstockLabs is Bitcoin
scaling company and core contributor to Rootstock, the longest
running and largest Bitcoin sidechain. RootstockLabs are fellow
pioneers in the Bitcoin landscape and one of the first bitcoin
minting communities. Rootstock combines Bitcoin's proof-of-work
security with Ethereum's smart contract flexibility.
- SNZ: SNZ is a crypto-native,
research-driven investment firm with a presence in Hong Kong,
Singapore, and the U.S., backing 200+ portfolios. Active since
2014, SNZ goes beyond investment by fostering community growth and
incubation. As one of the earliest backers of Stacks and other
public blockchains in Asia, SNZ has played a pivotal role in
bridging Western blockchain projects with Asian markets. SNZ is
committed to supporting innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem,
including Stacks, to unlock new possibilities for BTCFi.
- Sypher Capital: Sypher Capital is
an investment firm focusing on disruptive Digital Asset protocols
and technologies. The firm's Sypher Bitcoin Yield Fund seeks to
generate optimal risk-adjusted, native yield on Bitcoin.
- Asymmetric Research: Asymmetric
Research (AR) has a proven track record of securing some of the
industry's most prominent protocols. It is the security partner for
leading bridge Wormhole, Jump Crypto, several top DeFi projects,
and leading protocols such as Solana, Cosmos, Berachain, etc. AR is
also a core contributor to Solana’s highly anticipated new
validator client, Firedancer.
As a category, Bitcoin Layers have seen a dramatic rise in the
past year. According to data from DeFiLlama, TVL on Bitcoin Layers
has grown over 460% in the past year, from ~$500M TVL in 2024 to
about ~$2.8B TVL in February 2025.
Given sBTC’s proximity to Bitcoin and adoption from major
industry players including top staking providers, custodians, and
top ecosystems like Solana and Aptos, sBTC is connecting the demand
for Bitcoin with the global future across all of crypto. Stacks and
the community building this DeFi ecosystem understand that all
roads lead back to Bitcoin.
###
About Stacks
Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2, enables smart contracts and
decentralized applications to use Bitcoin as a secure base layer.
The Nakamoto release, activated on October 29, 2024, brought faster
speeds and transactions that are as irreversible as Bitcoin's once
confirmed. This set the stage for sBTC, a programmable Bitcoin
asset, which launched on December 17, 2024. Stacks is the current
leading Bitcoin L2 by developer traction and market cap and is
helping unlock Bitcoin and its $1T in passive capital as a fully
programmable, productive asset. The Stacks (STX) token, used as gas
on the L2, was the first to undergo an SEC-qualified sale in the
United States. The project explicitly decentralized with the
mainnet launch in 2021. In the Stacks ecosystem, there are
currently 30+ contributing entities including a non-profit Stacks
Foundation, a developer tooling company Hiro, Xverse, Trust
Machines, Mechanism, Bitcoin L2 Labs, ALEX, Bitcoin Frontier Fund,
and more.
Contact
Claire
Topalian
press@stacks.org