Even though the crypto market remains in a deep bear phase, Bitcoin’s market capitalization has consistently remained at the trillion-dollar level, becoming the world’s largest digital store of value. But an awkward reality is that only a tiny fraction of this trillion-dollar capital is actually being “used”—according to DefiLlama, the current value of BTC in DeFi is just $4.3 billion, less than 0.33% of its total market cap.
In other words, over 99.6% of BTC sit quietly in wallets, generating no yield, participating in no lending, and serving as collateral for no financial products—they are merely "held," not "used."
If BTC's $1.31 trillion market capitalization were placed within the context of China's capital markets, its size would be roughly equivalent to the combined market capitalization of the six largest state-owned banks, or five Kweichow Moutai companies—this is not a scale that can be ignored.
The next chapter of Bitcoin will not be written solely by "store of value," but also defined by "utility."
In July, the Hashi testnet officially launched on Sui, providing developers, custodians, financial institutions, and ecosystem partners with a real-world environment to build and stress-test Bitcoin-collateralized financial applications—enabling them to close the product loop before Hashi’s mainnet launch.
Guardian Layer: A Deep Defense for BTC Collateral
Alongside the testnet launch is Hashi’s security architecture—Guardian Layer.
According to official documentation, Guardian Layer is a defense-in-depth security architecture designed specifically for institutional-grade BTC collateral management. It adds an independent security verification layer on top of Hashi’s existing threshold signature mechanism—which requires approval from one-third of Sui validators to move funds—creating a second, independent validation layer. All BTC collateral is secured under a 2/2 multisignature: releasing BTC requires both the MPC signature from Hashi’s validator nodes and the signature from Guardian, providing a final layer of protection against potential validator misconduct or systemic risk.
Odaily Note: Defense-in-depth is a classic security engineering concept that emphasizes layering multiple independent security mechanisms, so that if one layer fails, the others continue to provide protection—rather than relying solely on a single point of security.
For institutions, this means: collateral monitoring is no longer dependent on a single point; every movement of capital undergoes multiple layers of independent verification, providing structural safeguards for the security of funds in lending and credit markets.
Wave Digital Assets: Three-Year Commitment to BTC Fixed-Income Market
Among the inaugural partners on the Hashi testnet, the inclusion of Wave Digital Assets LLC (hereinafter referred to as Wave) is particularly noteworthy.
As an SEC-registered investment advisory firm, Wave not only participated in Hashi’s early development but also made a clear long-term commitment: to make its best efforts over three years to prioritize the tokenization of Bitcoin yield-bearing bonds on the Sui protocol via Hashi—a definitive bet that the programmable Bitcoin fixed-income market is ready for institutional adoption.
Wave CEO David Siemer previously said: “Hashi is the missing credit layer that has finally been filled, providing institutions with stable native yields.”
25+ partners: End-to-end coverage from custody to auditing
As the Hashi testnet launches, the ecosystem has already brought together over 25 partners, covering the entire chain of Bitcoin finance:
Custody and Wallet Integration: BitGo (institutional custody client), Blockdaemon, Cobo, Fordefi by Paxos (institutional wallet and infrastructure provider), Cubist (cross-chain collateral infrastructure), Ledger (self-custody service provider), SwissBorg (European ultra-high-net-worth retail/institutional asset management wallet);
Borrowing, trading, and liquidity provision: Bullish (institutional crypto asset platform), Cumberland (institutional-grade crypto market maker and liquidity provider), Erebor (OCC-chartered bank), FalconX (institutional-grade prime brokerage);
DeFi and lending apps: AlphaLend, Bluefin, Current, Scallop, Suilend (the first Sui-native DeFi protocol to support retail lending on day one), Fluid (a high-capital-efficiency system connecting lending, liquidity, and other financial products), Navi (one of the largest and longest-running DeFi protocols on Sui);
Vaults and Asset Management: Concrete by Blueprint Finance (yield infrastructure platform), Inveniam Capital (RWA yield strategy), Wave Digital Assets LLC;
Indices, oracles, insurance, and security audits: CF Benchmarks (oracle-connected crypto index provider), Soter Insure (institutional-grade, BTC-denominated native crypto insurance), Asymptotic, Certora, OtterSec (smart contract security and formal verification audits)...
Odaily: Formal verification is a technique that uses mathematical methods to prove that code behavior conforms to design specifications, offering stronger guarantees of correctness than traditional code audits—this is especially critical for institutional-grade financial products.
At the initial announcement of the devnet earlier this year, over 20 first-day partners had committed to building and deploying capital on Hashi. Now that the testnet is live, the partner lineup has expanded further, extending beyond infrastructure to encompass a broader range of financial services.
Bitcoin is no exception
“All major assets have eventually developed highly credit-based lending and liquidity markets, and Bitcoin will be no exception,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Mysten Labs, adding that Hashi is providing developers and infrastructure providers with the secure, transparent, on-chain programmable opportunities they’ve been waiting for.
The significance of this statement does not lie in its repetition of some "correct" notion—historically, every major asset class, including gold, real estate, and sovereign bonds, has indeed transitioned from "passive holding" to "active credit creation"—but rather in presenting a response: BTC’s trillion-dollar market cap has the potential to develop an equally deep credit and liquidity market on-chain.
What can developers do?
As the Hashi testnet launches, developer SDK documentation, integration guides, and technical resources are now available at sui.io/hashi.
Regarding the tax issues of great concern to BTC holders, Fenwick Law Firm's legal analysis previously indicated that locking BTC via Hashi and receiving the receipt token hBTC should not constitute a taxable event under U.S. federal income tax law—because hBTC is merely a proof of ownership of the underlying BTC, not an independent asset.
Odaily note: Fenwick’s core analogy is “checking a coat and receiving a coat check ticket”—receiving the ticket and retrieving the coat are not taxable events, because ownership never transfers.
From devnet to testnet, from proof of concept to real-world deployment, Hashi is gradually turning the "utility" narrative of a trillion-dollar BTC into a verifiable, programmable, and regulatable on-chain financial infrastructure. Perhaps this is the beginning of Bitcoin’s next chapter.