Bitcoin still maintains a market cap of close to $2 trillion. With some updates coming up around Bitcoin DeFi, some analysts believe that Cardano might play a significant role in it.
It all starts with a bold claim made by Dan from Crypto Capital Venture, who tweeted that Cardano is on its way to becoming Bitcoin’s DeFi backbone. That caught the attention of the analyst in a video on the Nick Regan YouTube channel.
The excitement wasn’t just about a flashy tweet. It was about the real potential in combining Bitcoin’s liquidity with Cardano’s smart contract power.
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Cardano and Bitcoin: A Powerful Combo?
The contrast is clear. Bitcoin is like a deep ocean of liquidity, but it wasn’t built to support DeFi tools like lending or yield farming. Cardano, on the other hand, has all the infrastructure for it. The analyst described Cardano as having the “diving boards, water slides, and certified lifeguards” a fun metaphor to say it’s fully ready for complex DeFi operations.
EMURGO, Cardano’s development arm, has teamed up with Bitcoin OS to bridge Bitcoin’s capital into Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem. But it’s not your usual wrapped token solution. A quiet update called Lace 1.22 was rolled out recently, which now lets users store and manage actual Bitcoin inside the Cardano interface. No bridges. No wrapping. Just real BTC next to your ADA in the same wallet. Even Charles Hoskinson gave it a public nod of approval.
And there’s more. At the Bitcoin 2025 conference, the plan is to showcase a live transaction, a real Bitcoin transaction executed through Cardano’s smart contracts. The goal is to show that this can work without changing Bitcoin’s core or requiring a community vote. Everything happens through Cardano’s own infrastructure, using secure side systems.
So What Does AI Say About Cardano?
That’s where things get especially interesting. The channel Altcoin Oracle asked ChatGPT: What if Cardano really does power Bitcoin’s DeFi? The answer was eye-opening. The AI predicted that ADA’s market cap could hit anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion by 2030. To put that into perspective, Cardano’s current market cap is around $24 billion, with a price of $0.70.
If ADA reached $500 billion, the price could go up to around $14.50. At $1 trillion, ADA could soar past $29. Even a conservative scenario paints a bullish picture. That would be a 20x to 40x return from today’s levels. It’s not just a hype train, it’s based on the idea that Bitcoin’s trusted brand and Cardano’s strong tech could create something entirely new in the DeFi space.
The Road Ahead and the Risks
But it’s not a guaranteed win. The biggest hurdle is security, especially across chains. Right now, using Bitcoin in DeFi feels clunky and risky. Wrapping, bridges, high fees, none of it feels native. Cardano wants to fix that with secure, non-custodial side contracts. These would use Bitcoin’s own hash power alongside Cardano’s EUTXO system, which allows you to track funds in a way that’s fully auditable and reduces single points of failure.
The narrator explained it with a perfect analogy. Bitcoin is like gold in a vault. Cardano builds the elevator that brings that gold down to the streets, where people can use it. If the elevator works, DeFi changes forever. If it doesn’t, Bitcoin stays safe and Cardano takes the heat.
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There’s institutional interest here too. Institutions are tired of holding spot ETFs. They want yield. And Cardano could offer them just that, yield on BTC, without giving up custody. That’s never really been done at scale before.
Cardano’s cautious, academic approach, often criticized as slow, might actually work in its favor here. Institutions like safety, predictability, and standards. And Cardano’s been built with all of those in mind.
If Cardano can pull this off, it won’t just boost ADA’s price. It could unlock a new wave of DeFi where Bitcoin plays the central role, something most people thought would never happen.
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