Stack and Fireblocks partner to bring Bitcoin-based DeFi to institutions
Update (2-4-26 at 6:49 UTC): This article has been updated to show the correct stack block time of 5 seconds.
FireBlocks, an institutional-grade crypto infrastructure company, announced on Wednesday that it will integrate Stacks, the decentralized finance (DeFi) layer of the Bitcoin protocol, to provide lending and leverage opportunities to institutional clients.
The merger will bypass Bitcoin's 10-minute block time using the Stacks blockchain, which takes an average of 5 seconds, a Stacks spokesperson told Cointelegraph.
All stack transactions are recorded on the Bitcoin ledger for a final record. Eliminating the 10-minute BTC block time barrier will solve one of the common objections for financial institutions looking to use BTC-based DeFi applications, a Stax spokesperson said.
According to Fireblocks, the integration will go live in early 2026, but an exact timeline has not been disclosed.
The integration of Fireblocks and Stacks shows the continued institutional interest in Bitcoin DeFi even in the midst of a market crash that saw the price of Bitcoin (BTC) drop 40% from its October 2025 peak of over $125,000.
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Bitcoin DeFi: The Future of Onchain Finance?
At the time of writing, Bitcoin-based DeFi applications had a total value locked (TVL) of about $5.5 billion, DeFillama said.
TVL in Bitcoin DeFi applications started to increase in October 2024, rising from $704 million to more than $9 billion in October 2025, before returning to current levels, according to DeFillama.
For comparison, the total value locked up across the entire crypto ecosystem was about $103 billion at the time of publication.
Proponents of Bitcoin DeFi claim that applications built on the Bitcoin protocol will eventually replace the traditional financial system with a democratized way of providing decentralized finance.
Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of BitWise, predicts that Bitcoin DeFi will grow to a $200 billion market.
However, the development of the second layer of Bitcoin and decentralized financial applications built on top of the protocol could threaten the decentralization of the base layer, said Marcus Bopp, CEO of crypto infrastructure company Track Systems.
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