Cardano Founder Predicts Bitcoin DeFi Will Outpace Ethereum and Solana

• Cardano says that Bitcoin is “back in the family and innovating again” and that its DeFi ecosystem will dwarf that of Ethereum and Solana.
• Cardano recently partnered with BitcoinOS, a smart contract platform on BTC, allowing the ADA family to access the $1.3 trillion liquidity in BTC.

For over a decade, the narrative has been that Bitcoin is only good as digital gold and a hedge against inflation, while all the heavy lifting, such as dApps, NFTs and DeFi, is left to Ethereum. However, Bitcoin has changed in recent times and is now competing with Ethereum, Solana and all other smart contract platforms for these lucrative markets, as we reported. According to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, BTC will overtake all these rivals and become the king of DeFi.

Cardano recently announced a partnership with BitcoinOS, a platform that offers smart contracts for BTC. The partnership allows the ADA ecosystem to access the $1.3 Bitcoin network without going through any intermediaries. The two will rely on the BOS Grail bridge, which provides a trustless connection between the two networks, allowing Cardano ecosystem dApps to access BTC liquidity without any intermediaries.

This partnership has pushed Hoskinson to revisit his long-held claims that Ethereum will not be the long-term winner in crypto.

“DeFi is coming to Bitcoin, and it will dwarf anything Solana and Ethereum have done,” he wrote on X.

Now that Bitcoin's back in the family and innovating again, thanks to @BTC_OS, I will re-launch the Bitcoin Education Project in 2025 and produce a new edition of my course. We are also going to prepare Aiken education for Bitcoin developers, including hosting on…

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 25, 2024

Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano

Bitcoin’s market cap at press time was $1.33 trillion, four times higher than that of second-placed Ethereum. However, Ethereum still dominates all aspects of decentralised applications. For instance, the total value locked on Ethereum stands at $47.2 billion, while BTC only has $2.184 billion, and this was only after a 150% rise in the past month alone.

This disparity has been primarily due to Bitcoin’s lack of smart contracts. DeFi requires smart contracts as there are no intermediaries, and for over a decade, it was assumed that BTC couldn’t support them. However, solutions like BitcoinOS are showing that developers can deploy applications on Bitcoin. The launch of Ordinals—the wildly popular NFT solutions on Bitcoin that even overtook Ethereum NFTs at some point—has also opened up BTC owners to the vast possibilities on the network.

However, the future of DeFi on Bitcoin probably lies with cross-chain integration. While smart contracts can now be deployed on the network, it’s still slow and expensive, and this would require a massive change or even a fork to alter.

Therefore, solutions like Cardano’s partnership with BitcoinOS, present one of the biggest opportunities for BTC owners. As BitcoinOS explained, it’s a win-win for both the altcoins and for BTC. It stated:

Altcoins can now leverage Bitcoin’s security as a Layer 2 solution. Bitcoin evolves without changing its base code, and crypto gets new tech on solid ground.

BTC changes hands at $67,000 and has traded sideways in the past day.