According to Calvin Shen, chief commercial officer at Hex Trust, the collaboration can improve the “financial utility of Bitcoin for our institutional clients.”
To take advantage of the $180 billion market opportunity surrounding the Bitcoin ecosystem, Hex Trust, a fully regulated supplier of digital asset services, has teamed up with the Stacks Asia Foundation.
Future on-ramps for decentralized finance (DeFi) apps will be implemented as part of the agreement, and the custodial platform will acquire support for the Stacks layer and all associated digital assets.
According to Kyle Ellicott, investor relations lead at Stacks, the collaboration indicates a maturing market and increasing institutional interest in Bitcoin-based DeFi. He stated:
Hex Trust’s entry “speaks to the increase in consumer demand in Asia” for Bitcoin ecosystem products, Ellicott said.
Hex Trust’s chief commercial officer, Calvin Shen, noted that the collaboration might help improve the “financial utility of Bitcoin for our institutional clients.”
In a developing paradigm known as Bitcoin DeFi or BTCFi, similar linkages could increase the usefulness of the Bitcoin network. SIP-010, the fungible token standard on Stacks, will be supported by one of the initial integrations in this instance, making it possible for tokens to be readily tracked and transferred.
Since the 2024 Bitcoin halving, when the Runes protocol—the first fungible token standard on the Bitcoin blockchain—was launched, interest has increased in developing DeFi capabilities on the Bitcoin network.
Asia is seeing an increase in institutional demand for cryptocurrency.
According to Stacks’ Ellicott, institutional demand for cryptocurrencies has increased “exponentially each year” in Asian markets.
According to Ellicott, Stacks established agreements with service providers interested in institutional solutions throughout the continent partly because of the increased institutional interest. He went on to say:
“The Asian markets have been foundational for crypto since its early inception, and the institutional demand grows exponentially each year. The rise of the Bitcoin Ecosystem which has since much of its development in Asia…”
Many additional initiatives are enhancing the usefulness of Bitcoin, such as Hermetica, which introduced USDh, the first synthetic dollar backed by Bitcoin, with an initial 25% dividend for investors.
Hermetica is a Bitcoin DeFi technology that is native to Stacks. According to Jakob Schillinger, the creator and CEO of the company, Bitcoin DeFi may be the next big thing in cryptocurrency.
“In the next five years, we think Bitcoin DeFi will equal and surpass Ethereum DeFi in size,” Schillinger said:
“We’re already seeing months where Ordinals trading volumes are higher than volumes for Ethereum and Solana NFTs combined. With over $1 [trillion] in latent BTC capital, Bitcoin DeFi is primed for explosive growth.”
Additionally, Zest Protocol, supported by Binance Labs and Tim Draper, introduced a Bitcoin-based token that gives holders staking income.