SNZ, UTXO Capital, Jump Crypto Among Leaders to Deposit Early in sBTC, Unlocking Bitcoin DeFi Utility
New York, New York, February 26th, 2025, Chainwire
Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2 activating Bitcoin DeFi, today announced a series of major institutions adopting sBTC for their Bitcoin strategy. sBTC, a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed, decentralized programmable asset, has attracted significant interest from major institutions and industry leaders since its December 2024 mainnet launch, signaling a strong position in the tokenized BTC asset landscape.
Early depositors participating in sBTC’s first cap included UTXO, SNZ, Jump Crypto, and many more. Early demand for sBTC resulted in a second cap raise that tripled capacity for deposits. This cap was met less than 24 hours after its February 25th opening, ushering in the latest wave of builders, institutions, wealth managers, and retail investors to access sBTC. One rapidly-growing sBTC use case, Zest, has already amassed nearly 40% of all sBTC in the protocol, demonstrating usability and productivity for bitcoin. With growing support from depositors and builders and continued technical progress, sBTC’s next milestone will be its withdrawal functionality, which is expected to arrive in March 2025.
As of February 2025, the demand for tokenized Bitcoin assets has been steadily growing. This demand is driven by bitcoin holders who are beginning to recognize Bitcoin layers like Stacks and others can offer solutions aligned with the promise of Bitcoin security. According to BBA data, Tokenized BTC supply has reached 1.67% of BTC’s circulating supply, a level not seen since October 2022.
”The growing adoption of sBTC provides essential liquidity for developers building and scaling applications,” said Alex Miller, CEO of Hiro. “We’ve already seen builders using our developer tools adopt sBTC to deliver solutions like native bitcoin yield generation, lending, borrowing, DEXs, and scaling of L1 activities like Runes and Ordinals. I predict that next we’ll see more innovation of these use cases, as well as new ideas through AI agents and more.”
Among tokenized assets, sBTC is a versatile solution, enabling flexible smart contracts and transactions that leverage Bitcoin’s security and irreversibility. sBTC is uniquely ushering in fully activated capital for BTC holders instead of solely staking or locking BTC on the L1.
“We look for technologies that unlock latent capital and expand potential use cases for Bitcoin,” said Saurabh Sharma, at Jump Trading. “sBTC fosters a more dynamic and interconnected financial landscape, and we are pleased to participate in the ecosystem.”
Early sBTC Depositors Include:
- UTXO Management: UTXO Management is a major player in the Bitcoin ecosystem and has invested in many of the top Bitcoin companies through their venture arm. 210k Capital, their liquid fund, deploys capital across Bitcoin-related investment opportunities in public and private markets.
- Jump Crypto: Jump Crypto is part of the Jump Trading Group, a research-driven quantitative trading firm and one of the largest traders, by volume, across asset classes. Jump Crypto is also a key infrastructure builder and R&D contributor to the crypto ecosystem and is excited about the prospects of Web3 and blockchain technology to revolutionize open, community-driven networks.
- CMS Holdings: CMS Holdings invests in liquid and illiquid crypto tokens as well as taking equity stakes in select companies. CMS is an active investor in the Bitcoin ecosystem, participating in venture deals for companies contributing to scaling Bitcoin.
- RootstockLabs: RootstockLabs is Bitcoin scaling company and core contributor to Rootstock, the longest running and largest Bitcoin sidechain. RootstockLabs are fellow pioneers in the Bitcoin landscape and one of the first bitcoin minting communities. Rootstock combines Bitcoin’s proof-of-work security with Ethereum’s smart contract flexibility.
- SNZ: SNZ is a crypto-native, research-driven investment firm with a presence in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S., backing 200+ portfolios. Active since 2014, SNZ goes beyond investment by fostering community growth and incubation. As one of the earliest backers of Stacks and other public blockchains in Asia, SNZ has played a pivotal role in bridging Western blockchain projects with Asian markets. SNZ is committed to supporting innovation within the Bitcoin ecosystem, including Stacks, to unlock new possibilities for BTCFi.
- Sypher Capital: Sypher Capital is an investment firm focusing on disruptive Digital Asset protocols and technologies. The firm’s Sypher Bitcoin Yield Fund seeks to generate optimal risk-adjusted, native yield on Bitcoin.
- Asymmetric Research: Asymmetric Research (AR) has a proven track record of securing some of the industry’s most prominent protocols. It is the security partner for leading bridge Wormhole, Jump Crypto, several top DeFi projects, and leading protocols such as Solana, Cosmos, Berachain, etc. AR is also a core contributor to Solana’s highly anticipated new validator client, Firedancer.
As a category, Bitcoin Layers have seen a dramatic rise in the past year. According to data from DeFiLlama, TVL on Bitcoin Layers has grown over 460% in the past year, from ~$500M TVL in 2024 to about ~$2.8B TVL in February 2025.
Given sBTC’s proximity to Bitcoin and adoption from major industry players including top staking providers, custodians, and top ecosystems like Solana and Aptos, sBTC is connecting the demand for Bitcoin with the global future across all of crypto. Stacks and the community building this DeFi ecosystem understand that all roads lead back to Bitcoin.
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About Stacks
Stacks, the leading Bitcoin L2, enables smart contracts and decentralized applications to use Bitcoin as a secure base layer. The Nakamoto release, activated on October 29, 2024, brought faster speeds and transactions that are as irreversible as Bitcoin’s once confirmed. This set the stage for sBTC, a programmable Bitcoin asset, which launched on December 17, 2024. Stacks is the current leading Bitcoin L2 by developer traction and market cap and is helping unlock Bitcoin and its $1T in passive capital as a fully programmable, productive asset. The Stacks (STX) token, used as gas on the L2, was the first to undergo an SEC-qualified sale in the United States. The project explicitly decentralized with the mainnet launch in 2021. In the Stacks ecosystem, there are currently 30+ contributing entities including a non-profit Stacks Foundation, a developer tooling company Hiro, Xverse, Trust Machines, Mechanism, Bitcoin L2 Labs, ALEX, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, and more.