Bitcoin is the world’s oldest cryptocurrency and its most established, and this gives it a huge advantage over other kinds of digital assets. Everyone knows that it’s the most valuable crypto by far, and it’s also extremely secure. It’s highly liquid too, making it easy to trade, and it’s more accessible and spendable than any other kind of cryptocurrency.
Despite these advantages, there are many who argue that Bitcoin is far from superior to other cryptocurrencies due to its lack of utility. Apart from “hodling” and hoping the price will go up, using it to send money to friends or buying things at the few merchants that now accept it, there’s not much else you can “do” with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s lack of utility was a design choice made by its creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The idea was to optimize BTC for one specific application. Satoshi envisioned a straightforward digital currency that one user could send to another, with robust security and anti-inflationary properties thanks to its capped supply.
But fast-forward 16 years, and as Bitcoin’s value has grown, so have its ambitions. With more than 2 trillion dollars in value locked into the Bitcoin blockchain, it’s backed by an immense amount of capital that can do so much more. Potentially, it can be used to secure an entire ecosystem of digital financial services, ranging from algorithmic stablecoins to decentralized insurance protocols, and even other blockchain networks.
Unlocking this potential involves transforming Bitcoin into a yield-generating asset, and it’s an idea that has already gotten traction. Protocols like Stacks, Merlin Chain, and Rootstock have given rise to a rapidly growing BTCFi economy, with “staked” Bitcoin growing to more than $3 billion in total value locked. But this is only the beginning, for Bitcoin’s liquidity can be extended across the entire crypto ecosystem, where it will act as a security umbrella for every kind of decentralized application.
Bitcoin As A Security Layer
With the emergence of native staking, Bitcoin now has aspirations to become a financial primitive, where it can be used as collateral to secure multiple proof-of-stake blockchains against malicious actions such as 51% attacks, double spending, and double signing.
It was the Babylon Protocol that paved the way for Bitcoin staking, creating a framework for BTC to be locked in smart contracts, so that capital can be used to secure third-party PoS blockchains, instead of them trying to attract their security capital. It was an attempt to overcome the notorious cold-start problem, where new protocols struggle to attract users to stake funds to secure their network, because when they first launch, they are insecure. No one wants to be the first to risk their funds on a network where they could be easily lost, yet someone needs to be first if that network is ever to become secure.
By tapping into Bitcoin’s security foundation, developers have a simple way to get around that problem, and their decentralized networks will benefit from far stronger security than they could ever hope to amass by themselves.
It’s an intriguing, innovative concept, and as always in crypto, some are looking to take it further, building on and expanding the idea to make it even better and more useful. That’s the goal of SatLayer, which wants to build a new economic layer for Bitcoin, making it fully programmable to support the next generation of digital finance.
Bitcoin Validated Services
SatLayer borrows from the concept of Actively Validated Services on Ethereum, which utilize already staked assets to extend the security of that blockchain to additional applications and services. With Bitcoin Validated Services, developers can do much the same with staked BTC, tapping into the rugged security foundations of the Bitcoin blockchain to protect dApps built on SatLayer’s Layer-2 network.
BVSs can share Bitcoin’s cryptoeconomic security across an unlimited range of different applications, including DeFi dApps such as lending and borrowing protocols, blockchain bridges that are used to transfer crypto across networks, zero-knowledge proofs that enable private transactions, and much more.
Ethereum’s AVSs are a demonstrable proof-of-concept, but they are no match for Bitcoin’s BVS, which can tap into a much deeper pool of cryptoeconomic capital. With its market cap of more than $2.07 trillion as of June 1, 2025, Bitcoin is worth more than all of the other cryptocurrencies in the world combined. It also boasts unrivaled decentralization in terms of hashing power, meaning no other network comes close to matching its security.
SatLayer’s shared security model makes sense as it eliminates the duplication of effort. Instead of each PoS blockchain trying to attract its own security, and thus diluting the amount of capital available to secure each one, they can all leverage the same pool of funds. The model is further enhanced by BTC’s wide level of acceptance and trust. These days, many of its harshest critics concede that it’s no longer “going to zero”, as they used to claim.
Who Needs Bitcoin Security?
The potential of BVSs stretches far and wide, as they can unlock liquidity to secure almost any kind of decentralized protocol. For instance, a blockchain bridge that links Bitcoin to a network such as Solana, or two different Bitcoin L2s or sidechains, can use a BVS to secure transactions using Bitcoin as a foundation. A decentralized exchange platform could tap into a BVS to securely settle transactions across any network, meaning that every trade would be validated and secured by Bitcoin itself.
Other examples include Bitcoin-backed stablecoins, which can not only use BTC as collateral to maintain a stable peg but tap into it to verify every payment, transaction, and swap. BVSs could also be used to secure a sequencer that provides censorship resistance or guarantees liveness, or serve as the foundation of a data availability node, using its cryptoeconomic security to guarantee its data is valid.
Another interesting use case is decentralized lending, where a protocol can use the collateral deposited in a BVS as a guarantee to cover bad liquidations. Data oracles, ZK-rollups, optimistic rollups, and automated market makers can also be architected to leverage Bitcoin as collateral.
A New Economy, Where Bitcoin Is King
If SatLayer succeeds in its mission to transform Bitcoin’s utility, it will revolutionize the very concept of cryptoeconomic security, providing developers with a more scalable, secure and efficient foundation for building dApps that have greater resilience to malicious attacks.
Such a transformation would have an enormous impact on the crypto economy, unlocking new capital efficiencies for investors and opening the floodgates for Bitcoin itself to become a smarter asset on which an entirely new economy is built. SatLayer is looking to evolve Bitcoin from a store of value into a programmable gold standard that powers more efficient finance, where institutional capital flows into DeFi, real-world assets, and a tokenized economy.
What will emerge is an entirely new kind of financial system, where Bitcoin will be king.
Also Read: Is Bitcoin Set to Crush Gold in 2025? The Shocking Forecasts
