Charles Hoskinson Predicts Bitcoin Will Overtake Ethereum and Become the King of DeFi

Cardano recently announced a partnership with BitcoinOS, a platform that offers smart contracts for BTC.

Cardano’s partnership with BitcoinOS is pushing the boundaries of DeFi and cross-chain integration. Despite Bitcoin’s massive market cap, Ethereum still dominates decentralised applications due to its smart contracts. However, solutions like BitcoinOS and cross-chain integration are opening up new possibilities for DeFi on Bitcoin.

Cardano’s recent partnership with BitcoinOS has highlighted the narrative shift in the cryptocurrency space. For over a decade, the common belief was that Bitcoin served primarily as digital gold and a hedge against inflation. Meanwhile, Ethereum handled the heavy lifting, such as decentralised applications (dApps), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralised finance (DeFi).

However, recent times have seen Bitcoin changing. It is now competing with Ethereum, Solana, and other smart contract platforms for these markets.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who has consistently downplayed Ethereum’s long-term dominance, believes that BTC will overtake all rivals and become the king of DeFi.

Cardano Partners with BitcoinOS to Access BTC Liquidity, Pave Way for DeFi on Bitcoin.

Cardano’s partnership with BitcoinOS is the latest development in a string of collaborations between the two cryptocurrencies. The partnership will allow the ADA ecosystem to access the $1.3 Bitcoin network without using any intermediaries. The two will use the BOS Grail bridge, which provides a trustless connection between the two networks. This will allow Cardano ecosystem dApps to access BTC liquidity without any intermediaries.

The partnership has prompted Hoskinson to reconsider his long-held assertion that Ethereum will not emerge victorious in crypto over the long term.

“DeFi is coming to Bitcoin, and it will dwarf anything Solana and Ethereum have done,” he wrote on X.

Now that Bitcoin's back in the family and innovating again, thanks to @BTC_OS, I will re-launch the Bitcoin Education Project in 2025 and produce a new edition of my course. We are also going to prepare Aiken education for Bitcoin developers, including hosting on…

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 25, 2024

Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano.

Bitcoin’s market cap at press time was $1.33 trillion, rendering it four times higher than that of second-placed Ethereum. But Ethereum still dominates decentralised applications.

For instance, the total value locked on Ethereum stands at $47.2 billion, while BTC only has $2.184 billion, and this was only after a 150% rise in the past month alone.

This disparity is primarily attributed to Bitcoin’s lack of smart contracts. DeFi necessitates smart contracts as there are no intermediaries. It was widely assumed for over a decade that BTC couldn’t support them. However, solutions like BitcoinOS are demonstrating that developers can deploy applications on Bitcoin.

The launch of Ordinals, the immensely popular NFT solutions on Bitcoin that even surpassed Ethereum NFTs at one point, has also exposed BTC owners to the vast possibilities on the network.

Cross-chain integration, however, is likely to determine the future of DeFi on Bitcoin. While smart contracts can now be deployed on the network, it is still slow and costly, and altering this would necessitate a massive change or even a fork.

Hence, solutions like Cardano’s partnership with BitcoinOS present one of the greatest opportunities for BTC owners. It’s a win-win for both the altcoins and BTC, as BitcoinOS explained.

Altcoins can now use Bitcoin's security as a Layer 2 solution. Bitcoin evolves without changing its base code, and crypto gets new tech on solid ground.

BTC changes hands at $67,000 and has traded sideways in the past day.