Bitcoin’s biggest believers say it doesn't need DeFi. Alexei Zamyatin told Sandmark why he’s betting they’re wrong.
For years, Bitcoin has stood apart from the rest of crypto, proud, slow-moving, and deeply suspicious of change. Its culture values purity over progress, and its builders often wear conservatism like armour. Yet as DeFi reshaped Ethereum and every other smart-contract platform on Earth, Bitcoin’s $1.3tn ecosystem remained mostly static, its trillions in idle capital sitting behind cold-storage walls.
Alexei Zamyatin, co-founder of BOB (Build on Bitcoin), thinks that time is ending.
Building on the unbuildable ;
“Bitcoin is still the largest digital asset; it has the biggest user base and the broadest global adoption,” Zamyatin says. “But despite its scale, Bitcoin still lacks real DeFi infrastructure.”
To understand what BOB aims to change, it helps to know what ‘DeFi infrastructure’ actually means. In traditional markets, financial infrastructure comprises banks, brokers, and clearinghouses. In DeFi, it’s code that performs those same functions onchain: lending protocols that replace banks, automated exchanges that replace brokers, and collateralised stablecoins that replace settlement systems. Ethereum built this full stack years ago. Bitcoin never did, leaving holders with assets they can’t easily borrow against, trade or deploy without wrapping them on another chain.
That gap, he argues, is massive. Roughly $40bn worth of BTC already circulates through wrapped tokens on other chains, yet just 0.3% is used natively on Bitcoin itself, he estimates. “Compare that to 30-50% of ETH, depending on how you count it, that’s a hundred-fold gap,” he said.
BOB’s pitch is simple but radical: a hybrid Layer-2 that lets developers deploy Ethereum-style smart contracts while settling on Bitcoin. The design combines the EVM’s liquidity and tooling with Bitcoin’s security, a trust-minimised bridge built on BitVM and Bitcoin staking. “We don’t want to reinvent Ethereum’s stack,” says Zamyatin. “We want to level the playing field and make it accessible to Bitcoin holders.”
A bridge without trust :
Zamyatin rejects the notion that BOB is just another sidechain. “Hybrid is the design we came up with, and since then, others, StarkWare, Hermez, even Tron, have experimented with similar ideas,” he says.
To anchor that trust, BOB is launching with an institutional consortium of more than 20 members, including Wintermute, Amber, and P2P, all of which are already running nodes on Testnet. “Open-source systems take time to earn credibility,” he says. “Even if users don’t read the code, they’ll trust that major institutions are participating, while BitVM’s one-honest-party model ensures security underneath.”
That alliance, branded the BitVM Accelerated Alliance, is meant to give BOB early legitimacy while its open infrastructure matures. “Institutions keep telling us they’d use DeFi if it felt safe and native,” he adds. “They want to keep Bitcoin on Bitcoin, borrow against it, mint Bitcoin-backed stablecoins, earn yield, without leaving the base layer.”
Zamyatin insists BOB isn’t chasing maximalists but pragmatists: Bitcoiners who want yield, and Ethereum developers who want Bitcoin liquidity. “Convincing people that Bitcoin deserves more utility is easy,” he says. “Everyone, regardless of tribe, holds some BTC.”
BOB’s partnerships reflect that strategy. Ledger is an investor and design partner, helping integrate yield products directly into Ledger Live. Fireblocks and Cobo are integrating for institutional custody. Uniswap is already live on BOB and is now the fourth-largest market.
Three years from now, Zamyatin predicts, Bitcoin Layer-2s will dominate the market. “Every major chain and app will have native Bitcoin deposits and integration,” he says. “ETH is strong, stablecoins are useful, but Bitcoin is still the anchor of the system.”
Whether that vision holds or not, BOB’s gamble is clear: Bitcoin’s next bull run may not be about price, but about purpose.
Three years from now.
@Binance News @crypto_ding @Crypto Trading Master 923327883841 @Mastering Crypto @Crypto1com @Bitcoin
