There’s a growing momentum in web3 to turn the world’s largest crypto asset, Bitcoin, into the base layer of a programmable, yield-bearing financial ecosystem.
While Ethereum has long been the hub of DeFi activity, Bitcoin has been historically “idle” and non-yielding.. However, Bitcoin DeFi is coming up as a fast-emerging movement to make Bitcoin productive without sacrificing its security, liquidity, or decentralization.
Signifying this, Hunter Rogers, formerly a senior ecosystem lead at TRON DAO, is making big bets on turning the asset programmable. For this, he has joined Bitcoin-native yield protocol TeraHash as a co-founder, leaving his role at TRON.
This is a move that spotlights growing momentum around “BTC-native” DeFi products that convert mining hashrate into liquid, on-chain yield.
Former TRON Leader’s New Project
Bitcoin was designed as a simple, secure payment and store-of-value network, not a smart contract platform. That’s why DeFi initially exploded on Ethereum – it’s programmable by default.
But over the past few years, new layers and protocols have started making Bitcoin programmable, bridging liquidity into DeFi, and introducing BTC-native financial primitives.
With Bitcoin Layer2s and wrapped bitcoin continuing to work in that momentum, TerraHash is a bitcoin native yield protocol.
It tokenizes Bitcoin mining hashrate into $THS, a token that yields BTC-based rewards. This, the company describes as, as a bridge between physical Bitcoin mining and composable DeFi, issuing tokens that represent real mining power and letting holders earn daily BTC rewards without operating miners.
Hunter, now co-founder of TerraHash says, “Bitcoin mining generates over $20B in annual yield, but that massive value stream is trapped behind physical infrastructure, energy logistics, and operational overhead.”
Its pitch revolves around making Bitcoin’s mining yield “liquid, composable, and accessible” through on-chain financial products – essentially Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi).
In his role, Rogers will lead ecosystem partnerships, institutional outreach and community growth as TeraHash prepares for mainnet.
Also Read: Charles Hoskinson Wants to Fix Cardano’s $5Bn DeFi Problem
Is Bitcoin DeFi Growing?
As per data from DeFi Llama, Bitcoin DeFi TVL at $7.7 billion marks a historic high, up from under $300 million in early 2024 – a 25× increase in less than two years.
Despite this, it still represents under 1 % of total BTC supply, suggesting massive headroom for growth.
Bitcoin DefiThe activity remains heavily concentrated in a handful of emerging protocols and L2 ecosystems such as Stacks, RSK, BitVM test deployments, and mining-yield tokenization projects like TeraHash.
Daily token incentives at $92 million further show strong liquidity mining and staking programs fueling adoption.
Active address count at 622k+ also underscores genuine user engagement across the Bitcoin DeFi stack. In an interview, Charles Hoskinson warns Ethereum faces a “sleeping giant”: “When Bitcoin wakes up with Bitcoin DeFi, its TVL will be hundreds of billions—larger than Ethereum’s market cap. It’ll have more liquidity, and sovereigns and BlackRock will be there.” . He has launched Cardano protocol, Lace wallet to bring the yield to Bitcoin DeFi.
Also Read: Western Union Joins Forces With Crypto Startup Rain
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Source: https://coingape.com/block-of-fame/pulse/ecosystem-leader-hunter-departs-tron-to-bet-on-bitcoin-defi-with-new-project-terahash/
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