The move comes just three days after MegaETH unveiled its new MegaUSD stablecoin.
MegaETH has selected Lombard Finance – a protocol that lets users earn yield on their Bitcoin (BTC) with a total value locked of $1.6 billion – as its primary Bitcoin partner ahead of its mainnet launch, the companies announced on Thursday, Sept. 11.
The partnership will allow users to mint and redeem Bitcoin directly on MegaETH’s network without relying on custodial wrappers, according to a blog post by Lombard. Bitcoin is currently the largest digital asset with a market capitalization of nearly $2.3 trillion.
Bitcoin on MegaETH will be native (fully backed and not an IOU) and permissionless. Meanwhile, the integration is designed to let developers embed BTC into applications through Lombard’s software development kit.
The move highlights efforts to expand Bitcoin’s role in decentralized finance (DeFi). The companies noted that while centralized exchanges (CEXs) handle trillions of dollars in Bitcoin trading each year, little of that liquidity flows into DeFi. BTC is currently changing hands at $114,500, up 99% over the past year, according to The Defiant’s price page.
The integration also comes amid a broader trend in traditional finance (TradFi), where institutions are increasingly acquiring Bitcoin for Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) to leverage its liquidity and to hold as a store-of-value.
‘Bitcoin Capital Markets’
MegaETH and Lombard say this move could now provide similar tools for decentralized applications, to bring institutional-style treasury management to DeFi.
“With Lombard’s institutional-grade Bitcoin infrastructure and MegaETH’s real-time execution, we’re unlocking something entirely new: Bitcoin Capital Markets,” MegaETH officials said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The announcement comes just days after MegaETH Labs, the team behind the MegaETH blockchain, unveiled MegaUSD (USDm), a native stablecoin built in partnership with Ethena Labs using Ethena’s Stablecoin-as-a-Service stack.
USDm is designed to lower transaction costs and support real-time applications across the network. According to MegaETH, its reserves will primarily be held in BlackRock’s tokenized U.S. Treasury fund (BUIDL), which manages more than $2.2 billion in assets.