Most Bitcoin holders buy, move their coins into a cold wallet, and never touch them again. Fisher Yu, co-founder and chief technology officer of Babylon, thinks that habit is about to break.
Most Bitcoin holders buy, move their coins into a cold wallet, and never touch them again. Fisher Yu, co-founder and chief technology officer of Babylon, thinks that habit is about to break.
“Bitcoin will become a universal” financial tool, Yu told TheStreet Roundtable at Token2049 in Singapore. He wants Bitcoin to be “not just digital gold but actually productive.”
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Babylon has achieved significant scale over the last several years. Babylon says its protocol has activated more than $10 billion in Bitcoin since launching in August 2024, driven by partnerships with major crypto exchanges.
Binance and Kraken both offer Babylon staking on their platforms.
“All the major exchanges are all using our protocol for their Bitcoin Earn program, except Coinbase,” Yu said.
Coinbase took the custodial route instead. Its cbBTC is a wrapped token backed by Bitcoin held at the exchange.
Yu put Babylon’s current deposits at around 40,000 BTC and explained how their new Trustless Bitcoin Vaults let holders lock native Bitcoin as collateral and borrow stablecoins without bridging it to another chain. a16z crypto put $15 million behind it.
The 10-year Treasury yield is near 5%, its highest since 2007, a fact which Yu says will increase borrowing costs for crypto borrowers, but that on-chain borrowing will still beat what centralized lenders are able to provide.
Yu’s retail pitch is housing. Bitcoin-backed mortgages arrived earlier in 2026, with Coinbase and Better Home & Finance now letting buyers pledge Bitcoin toward home loans, and Fannie Mae backing their first token-backed mortgage fund.
With the 30-year mortgage rate at 7.32%, Yu says borrowing stablecoins against Bitcoin can come in at a “much, much lower rate.” The Fannie Mae product works a little differently, holding its Bitcoin with Coinbase and prices around 0.5 to 1.5 points above standard loans.
Yu believes that within the next five years or so, trustless on-chain collateral wins that comparison. If it does, he says, Bitcoin “can actually be repriced.”
