Binance’s venture capital and incubation arm has invested in Lombard, the crypto project behind the Bitcoin liquid staking token LBTC.
The investment will help Lombard expand LBTC onto new chains. Jacob Phillips, Lombard’s co-founder and head of strategy, said in an announcement that the goal is to grow the decentralized finance landscape on Bitcoin (BTC) by unlocking new opportunities for BTC holders.
Lombard launched its liquid staked token in August and is one of the projects looking to bring the benefits of decentralized finance to Bitcoin holders.
The platform’s DeFi on Bitcoin product has seen LBTC power yield strategies, institutional borrowing, and lending across Pendle, Maple Finance, and Morpho, respectively.
“Lombard’s approach to integrating Bitcoin with DeFi addresses a clear market need, and LBTC’s fast growth demonstrates user interest to unlock more utility from their Bitcoin holdings,” Andy Chang, investment director at Binance Labs, said.
According to data from Dune, Lombard’s total value locked in LBTC currently stands at over $640 million. Meanwhile, per details also shared on X, the liquid staking token has over 13,000 holders.
Growth for the platform has come amid Bitcoin’s market cap rising to over $1.3 trillion.
However, the BTC DeFi ecosystem is still only worth just over $1.3 billion. That’s about 10% of the market cap and suggests that the decentralized finance market on the flagship blockchain network is still largely untapped.
To unlock this idle Bitcoin liquidity, projects such as Lombard and Solv Protocol allow BTC holders to tap into staking, yield generation, and lending, among other products.