Fireblocks, an institutional-grade crypto infrastructure firm, introduced on Wednesday that it’ll combine Stacks, a decentralized finance (DeFi) layer for the Bitcoin protocol, to offer institutional purchasers entry to lending and yield-bearing alternatives.
The combination bypasses the 10-minute Bitcoin block time by leveraging the Stacks blockchain, which has a mean block time of about 29 seconds, a Stacks spokesperson informed Cointelegraph.
All Stacks transactions settle to the Bitcoin ledger for finality. Eradicating the 10-minute BTC block time barrier resolves probably the most widespread objections for monetary establishments wanting to make use of BTC-based DeFi functions, the Stacks spokesperson stated.
The combination will go stay in “early” 2026, in accordance with Fireblocks, however no actual timeline for the rollout was introduced.
The Fireblocks and Stacks integration displays continued institutional curiosity in Bitcoin DeFi even amid a market downturn that has prompted the worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to drop by about 40% from its all-time excessive above $125,000 reached in October 2025.
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Bitcoin DeFi: the way forward for onchain finance?
There was about $5.5 billion in complete worth locked (TVL) in Bitcoin-based DeFi functions at time of writing, in accordance to DeFiLlama.
The TVL in Bitcoin DeFi functions started rising in October 2024, surging from about $704 million to over $9 billion by October 2025, earlier than dropping again to present ranges, in accordance with DeFiLlama.
For comparability, the overall worth locked throughout the crypto ecosystem was about $103 billion at time of publication.
Proponents of Bitcoin DeFi say that functions constructed atop the Bitcoin protocol will finally exchange the normal monetary system, with decentralized programs that democratize entry to finance.
Matt Hougan, the chief funding officer for funding firm BitWise, forecast that Bitcoin DeFi may develop to grow to be a $200 billion market.
Nonetheless, the expansion of second layers on Bitcoin and decentralized finance functions constructed on high of the protocol may threaten the bottom layer’s decentralization, in accordance with Markus Bopp, the CEO of crypto infrastructure firm Trac Techniques.
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