Overview
- Lombard announced a partnership with Bitwise and Morpho at the Digital Asset Summit in New York to let institutions earn yield or borrow against bitcoin without moving it out of custody.
- Bitcoin Smart Accounts create an on-chain representation of collateral using Bitcoin-native tools like partially signed transactions and timelocks, so the underlying coins stay with the original custodian.
- Bitwise will design institutional yield strategies that blend decentralized lending with tokenized real-world assets, while Morpho supplies the borrowing infrastructure and stablecoin liquidity.
- Lombard says the design removes three long-standing hurdles for institutions by avoiding custody risk, bridge risk, and counterparty risk that often come with transfers or opaque OTC loans.
- The rollout is planned for Q2 2026, aimed at asset managers, corporate treasuries, and wealthy holders, with more custodians and protocol integrations to follow as Bitcoin’s DeFi footprint (about $2.93B TVL) expands.