Lombard collaborates with Bitwise to activate $500 billion in institutional custody of BTC for yield and collateralized lending

Lombard and Bitwise Asset Management announced a partnership at the Digital Asset Summit in New York, offering a solution for institutions to earn yields and collateralize BTC lending without moving assets out of custody, targeting the scale of BTC assets under institutional custody.

Bitwise will develop yield strategies that combine DeFi lending with tokenized real-world assets, while the decentralized lending protocol Morpho will provide the infrastructure for BTC collateralized lending. The platform uses Bitcoin-native tools such as partially signed transactions and time locks to verify collateral, allowing positions to be represented on-chain without transferring or re-collateralizing the underlying assets.

Phillips stated that Bitcoin Smart Accounts can simultaneously reduce custody, cross-chain bridge, and counterparty risks. This solution is aimed at high-net-worth individuals, asset management firms, and corporate treasuries, with plans to launch in the second quarter of 2026 and will add more custodians and protocols to expand coverage.

Lombard estimates that approximately $500 billion in BTC is under institutional custody; DefiLlama data shows that the total locked value of BTC in DeFi is about $2.93 billion, with a market cap of approximately $1.4 trillion; as of the time of writing, Babylon Protocol's total locked value is about $2.8 billion, and Lombard's is approximately $744 million.