Liquidium CEO Robin Obermaier discusses Bitcoin DeFi and cross-chain lending
In a recent episode of SlateCast, CryptoSlate’s Senior Editor Liam “Akiba” Wright and CEO Nate Whitehill sat down with Robin Obermaier, the CEO and founder of Liquidium, to discuss the evolving landscape of DeFi on Bitcoin and the future of cross-chain lending.
The Rise of Bitcoin DeFi
Obermaier began by addressing the current state of DeFi on Bitcoin, acknowledging its infancy while highlighting the progress made in fundamental technologies. He stated:
“DeFi on Bitcoin is still in its infancy. Despite obviously a lot of people saying like, Bitcoin will have all of the tools that Ethereum has and Solana has within like a couple of months. That’s just not realistic because we have so many more challenges on Bitcoin that we still have to overcome.”
Liquidium’s Peer-to-Peer Lending Protocol
The conversation then shifted to Liquidium’s core offering – a peer-to-peer lending protocol for Bitcoin-based assets. Obermaier demonstrated the platform’s functionality, explaining how lenders can create loan offers against Ordinals, Runes, and BRC20 tokens, while borrowers can use these assets as collateral to obtain Bitcoin loans.
“Lenders are creating offers, borrowers are accepting offers, lenders are countersigning, and then the loan starts,” Obermaier explained, highlighting the simplicity of the process.
Expanding to Eastern Markets
When asked about Liquidium’s plans to adapt to Eastern markets, which are heavily focused on fungible tokens, Obermaier outlined their strategy:
“We started a basically a Chinese Twitter account. We translated our landing page to Chinese already and then also going to translate the application soon. We’re also seeing a large influx from the Brazilian market, actually.”
Bitcoin Layer 2s and Cross-Chain Solutions
The discussion then turned to the potential of building on Bitcoin Layer 2s. Obermaier expressed a preference for solutions that allow interaction with Layer 1 Bitcoin, citing concerns about fragmentation and the need for users to bridge or wrap assets on traditional Layer 2s.
He highlighted promising projects like Arch Network, Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), and NEAR, which offer smart contract capabilities while allowing users to interact with native Bitcoin:
“We are closely looking into ICP, NEAR, and Arch because they still work with layer one Bitcoin. When it comes to proper layer twos, that’s something that we’re currently not interested in yet, but it obviously could change depending on the adoption of them.”
Cross-Chain Liquidity Pools
Obermaier revealed Liquidium’s ambitious plans for cross-chain liquidity pools, leveraging technologies like ICP and NEAR:
“What we can build with these technologies like NEAR and ICP are cross-chain liquidity pools for lending. So essentially building something like Aave, but instead of restricting it to one chain only, you could, for example, deposit native Bitcoin as a collateral and then borrow USDC on Solana against it.”
The Trump NFTs and Ethereum
When asked about the Trump team’s decision to build on Aave and Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, Obermaier offered a pragmatic perspective:
“I think that is, it makes sense for them at the moment because there is still a larger audience to Ethereum at the moment, especially because all of the main wallets… do support Ethereum and that’s kind of has been established as the most largely adopted chain for such use cases at the moment.”
As the podcast concluded, Obermaier invited interested parties to learn more about Liquidium through their website, Twitter, and Discord community. The discussion highlighted the rapid evolution of Bitcoin DeFi and the potential for cross-chain solutions to bridge the gap between different blockchain ecosystems.
Episode Hosts
Also known as “Akiba,” Liam Wright is a reporter, podcast producer, and Editor-in-Chief at CryptoSlate.
Nate Whitehill, a technology entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience developing web applications, plunged into digital assets upon discovering Bitcoin in 2015.
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Since 2017, CryptoSlate has strived to be an objective authority for the fast-moving and nascent digital assets space
Follow @cryptoslateIn this episode
Bitcoin, a decentralized currency that defies the sway of central banks or administrators, transacts electronically, circumventing intermediaries via a peer-to-peer network.
Robin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Liquidium, the leading lending protocol on Bitcoin.
Liquidium
Liquidium is the leading non-custodial lending protocol on native Bitcoin, allowing users to borrow and lend BTC against their Bitcoin assets, such as Ordinals and Runes..
