Fireblocks, an institutional-grade crypto infrastructure company, announced Wednesday that it will integrate Stacks, a decentralized finance (DeFi) layer for the Bitcoin protocol, to give institutional clients access to lending and yield opportunities.
The integration bypasses Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time by using the Stacks blockchain, which has an average block time of about 29 seconds, a Stacks spokesperson told Cointelegraph.
All Stacks transactions are finally settled on the Bitcoin ledger. Removing the 10 minutes $BTC Blocking time barrier solves one of the most common objections for financial institutions that want to use it $BTC-based DeFi applications, the Stacks spokesperson said.
The Bitcoin protocol produces blocks on average about every 10 minutes. Source: Mempool
According to Fireblocks, the integration will go live in “early” 2026, but no exact timeline for the rollout has been announced.
The integration of Fireblocks and Stacks reflects the continued institutional interest in Bitcoin DeFi, even amid a market downturn that has caused Bitcoin’s price ($BTC) will fall about 40% from its all-time high above $125,000 reached in October 2025.
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Bitcoin DeFi: The Future of Onchain Finance?
According to DeFiLlama, there was approximately $5.5 billion in total value locked (TVL) in Bitcoin-based DeFi applications at the time of writing.
The TVL in Bitcoin DeFi applications started to rise in October 2024, rising from around $704 million to over $9 billion in October 2025 before falling back to current levels, according to DeFiLlama.
The total value locked in Bitcoin DeFi applications. Source: DeFiLlama
By comparison, the total value of the crypto ecosystem was approximately $103 billion at the time of publication.
Bitcoin DeFi advocates say applications built on top of the Bitcoin protocol will eventually replace the traditional financial system, with decentralized systems that democratize access to finance.
Matt Hougan, the chief investment officer of investment firm BitWise, predicts that Bitcoin DeFi could grow into a $200 billion market.
However, the growth of second layers on Bitcoin and decentralized financial applications built on top of the protocol could threaten the decentralization of the base layer, according to Markus Bopp, the CEO of crypto infrastructure company Trac Systems.
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