The three firms bring the total number of committed Hashi institutional partners to more than 20. Other coalition members include BitGo, Blockdaemon, Bullish, FalconX, Ledger, Erebor Bank, AlphaLend, CF Benchmarks, OtterSec, and Certora, alongside DeFi protocols Suilend, Bluefin, Scallop, and Navi, among others. Hashi was first deployed to Sui's devnet on 19 March 2026. A mainnet rollout, starting with BTC-backed lending products, is expected later this year.

The announcement centres on a widely cited gap in Bitcoin's utility. Despite a market capitalisation of roughly $1.2 trillion, only about 0.46 percent of Bitcoin's circulating supply is actively deployed in decentralised finance. Hashi's design is premised on the idea that the obstacle is architectural rather than demand-driven: existing approaches either wrap BTC into a derivative token held by a custodian, or strand it on isolated Layer 2 chains where liquidity is thin.

Hashi sidesteps the custodian problem through a specific technical design. When a user deposits Bitcoin, the protocol generates a 2-of-2 multisig address on the Bitcoin network itself. Once Sui validators reach a quorum, they mint an equivalent token called #BTC on Sui, which can then serve as collateral in smart contracts. Moving funds requires a threshold Schnorr signature from at least one-third of validators, and a secondary Guardian layer guards against validator collusion. Bitcoin stays on the Bitcoin chain throughout. Smart contract logic runs in Sui's Move programming language, which supports formal verification.

That architecture matters in practical terms. The WBTC controversy of 2024, when BitGo announced a custody arrangement involving Justin Sun of TRON while he faced an active SEC lawsuit, triggered large withdrawals and prompted protocols including MakerDAO to cut their WBTC exposure. Hashi's design removes the single custodian point entirely, an argument that carries particular weight in markets where users have limited legal recourse if a custodian defaults.

The broader BTCFi sector has faced significant headwinds in recent months. Research from Spark Money estimates that sidechain TVL across Bitcoin DeFi fell 74 percent from a peak of $9.1 billion in October 2025. One data point captures the sustainability problem: Solv Protocol was managing $2.15 billion in TVL across 1.2 million users while generating approximately $41 in daily revenue, a figure that reflects how dependent many protocols became on token emissions rather than genuine fee income. A March 2026 exploit on the same protocol cost $2.7 million.

Each of the three new Hashi partners brings a distinct institutional function. Cumberland, a subsidiary of trading firm DRW and one of the largest OTC crypto liquidity providers globally, is evaluating how to use Hashi for structural onchain BTC liquidity provisioning. Paul Kremsky, Cumberland's global head of business development, said: "Bitcoin is the world's most liquid digital asset, but without native utility, it remains an off-chain asset."

SwissBorg is a regulated Swiss wealth app licensed in 47 countries with more than one million users across 16 currencies. Its founder and CEO Cyrus Fazel said the platform's community "has consistently sought native ways to lend and borrow against their Bitcoin," pointing to a retail demand the platform has not previously been able to serve through Bitcoin-native lending and borrowing rails.

Fluid, built by the team behind Instadapp, currently holds $703 million in TVL across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Plasma, Base, and Polygon and generates roughly $75 million in annualised fees according to DefiLlama. The protocol reports zero lender deposit losses across seven years of development, a track record that carries weight as it enters Bitcoin-native collateral territory for the first time. Co-founder Samyak Jain framed the opportunity as industry-wide: "The next phase of the industry's growth will come from bringing larger pools of capital onchain."

For users outside North America and Europe, the implications are concrete. Nigeria ranks among the top countries globally for peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading, where BTC frequently serves as a dollar substitute when foreign exchange is scarce. A Hashi-connected product would allow a Nigerian user to borrow a stablecoin against BTC holdings without selling, avoiding exposure to custodial risk. That connection is not hypothetical: in May 2026, Nigerian fintech Paga, which processes $1.5 billion in monthly payments, announced it was routing enterprise products through Sui using the USDsui stablecoin. The Central Bank of Nigeria's reporting requirements, routed through Paga Remitt, represent a viable regulatory compliance pathway for institutional partners targeting that market. Hashi and Paga do not yet have a documented joint product, but the infrastructure overlap is visible.

Indian users face a related incentive. A 30 percent flat tax on digital asset profits and a 1% TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) on trades make holding Bitcoin more attractive than active trading. Borrowing stablecoins against BTC without triggering a disposal event is a structurally appealing option, though any Hashi-connected product serving Indian users would need to navigate PMLA and FEMA compliance frameworks, and DeFi's regulatory classification in India remains unresolved.

Hashi's testnet goes live next month. Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer at Mysten Labs, said the protocol was built "to unlock the productive use of Bitcoin at a scale the industry hasn't seen before." Whether the coalition's institutional weight translates into retail access in emerging markets will depend on what front-end products get built before, and after, mainnet launch. SUI was trading at approximately $0.72 at time of publication, with a market capitalisation near $2.87 billion.