Lombard and Bitwise collaborate to activate $500 billion institutional custody of BTC for revenue and collateralized lending Odaily Planet Daily News: Lombard and Bitwise Asset Management announced a partnership at the Digital Asset Summit in New York, providing institutions with a solution to earn profits and mortgage BTC loans without moving out of custody, with the goal of covering the size of BTC assets under institutional custody. Bitwise will develop a revenue strategy that combines DeFi lending with tokenized real-world assets, and the decentralized lending protocol, Morpho, will provide infrastructure for BTC collateralized lending. The platform uses Bitcoin native tools such as partially signed transactions and time locks to verify collateral, allowing positions to be represented on the chain without transferring or re pledging underlying assets. Phillips stated that Bitcoin Smart Accounts can simultaneously reduce custody, cross chain bridge, and counterparty risks. This plan is aimed at high net worth individuals, asset management institutions, and corporate treasuries. It is planned to be launched in the second quarter of 2026 and will add more custodians and agreements to expand coverage. Lombard estimates that approximately $500 billion worth of BTC is under institutional custody; DefiLlama data shows that BTC has a total lock up volume of approximately $2.93 billion in DeFi, with a market value of approximately $1.4 trillion; As of the time of writing, the total locked up volume of Babylon Protocol is approximately $2.8 billion, and Lombard is approximately $744 million.