About this episode
In this episode of Bullish on Bitcoin from 2025, Alexei sits down with Seraphim — formerly Head of Growth at Ethena, Growth at Lido, and a key contributor at Euler — and now an advisor to BOB on DeFi strategy. With a front-row seat to three of the most consequential DeFi protocols of this cycle, Seraphim brings an Ethereum-native perspective on why Bitcoin DeFi is the most compelling untapped opportunity in crypto today.
Recorded on Bitcoin Pizza Day at a new all-time high, this episode covers the real lessons from Ethena and Lido applied to Bitcoin, the honest truth about sustainable yield sources on Bitcoin, why tokenised hash rate never took off, and why the institutional demand for Bitcoin yield is far larger than most people realise — it's just been waiting for the right infrastructure to exist.
In this episode we discuss:
- Seraphim's journey: from Euler, Lido, and Ethena to advising BOB — and what drew him to Bitcoin DeFi
- The core disconnect: Bitcoin has a multi-trillion dollar asset base but only a tiny fraction in DeFi
- How Bitcoin funds already seek yield today: borrow stables against BTC, deploy into Athena — and why that's unsustainable
- The biggest lesson from Ethena and Lido for Bitcoin builders: high risk-adjusted, scalable yield is the only game that matters
- ETH LSTs vs Bitcoin LSTs: similarities with EigenLayer, differences in mentality and risk aversion
- Why tokenised hash rate never took off — and whether it's still up for grabs
- Bitcoin LSD landscape: Lombard, Solv, Lorenzo, Bedrock, StakeStone — will it follow Pareto distribution like Ethereum?
- The leveraged loop thesis: how Bitcoin staking → LSTs → DeFi fees → more BTC could create a self-reinforcing flywheel
- Why EigenLayer's yield problem and Bitcoin staking face similar challenges — and why Bitcoin might solve it differently
- BOB's hybrid L2 design: why a ZK rollup on Ethereum plus Bitcoin staking is the only architecture that scales today
- Why structured products and options vaults on Bitcoin are underexplored but potentially huge
- Institutional appetite for Bitcoin yield is larger than anyone expected — capital is waiting, not absent
- The Pareto distribution of L2s: why there will only be one or two dominant Bitcoin L2s, and now is the time to build the moat
