Hong Kong — Bitcoin layer-2 builders made the case on Thursday that the subsequent section of crypto’s evolution received’t be about changing bitcoin as “digital gold,” however making it productive.
Talking at Consensus Hong Kong 2026, leaders from Citrea, Rootstock Labs and funding agency BlockSpaceForce argued that Bitcoin’s scaling layers are much less about uncooked throughput and extra about turning the world’s largest cryptocurrency right into a programmable monetary base layer.
“Most of it — the mission — is simply making Bitcoin a productive asset,” mentioned Gabe Parker, head of enterprise improvement at Citrea, a zk-rollup constructed on Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s base layer, he famous, was by no means designed for expressive good contracts. “It’s about introducing present narratives like DeFi, lending, borrowing, and including that stack to Bitcoin…It’s extra of a programmability function than scaling.”
Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, CEO of Rootstock Labs, identified that the business’s obsession with the time period “layer two” misses the purpose.
“Layer one is a retailer of worth. Layer two is an financial coordination layer…and layer three is a scaling layer that permits funds,” Gutierrez Zaldivar mentioned. “We should always begin speaking about networks which can be financial coordination layers.”
Panelists pointed to rising institutional demand for bitcoin-backed lending and yield methods. “Bitcoin has grown right into a macro monetary asset that everybody desires to carry,” mentioned Charles Chong of BlockSpaceForce. “The subsequent unlock is to construct a monetary system round it.”
However belief assumptions stay central to the talk. Parker of Citrea criticized the reliance on centralized custodians behind wrapped bitcoin merchandise on Ethereum. “If you happen to have a look at what secures wrapped bitcoin, it’s only a three-to-five multisig,” he mentioned. “That mannequin is just not scalable. If you wish to handle tons of of billions or trillions, you want protocol-based assumptions, not counterparty-based assumptions.”
Nonetheless, establishments are cautious. “On the one hand, they’ll work with regulated counterparties and have authorized recourse in a centralized method,” Chong of BlockSpaceForce mentioned. “Or they’ll deploy in BTCFi permissionless method, however in that case, you’re trusting the protocol governance and assuming good contract danger. I believe with this in thoughts, numerous establishments are literally going to select the previous resolution at the moment, at its present level.”
Gutierrez Zaldivar of Rootstock Labs argued hybrid compliance fashions might bridge that hole within the interim, however emphasised the long-term imaginative and prescient goes additional.
“To ensure that Bitcoin to grow to be related for the world, it’s not sufficient to be a retailer of worth,” he mentioned.
For Bitcoin’s scaling advocates, the guess is that even a small portion of bitcoin flowing into decentralized finance may reshape each the community and world markets within the years forward.
Learn extra: As DATs Face Stress, Establishments May Quickly Look to BTCFi for Their Subsequent Strategic Shift
