Bitcoin has begun to be turned into a source of income: why Stacks and Starknet are growing
Tokens of projects trying to turn bitcoin from a store of value into a source of income have surged on the crypto market. According to CoinGecko, Starknet (STRK) added about 46% over the last week, and Stacks (STX) — almost 20%.
The growth has specific reasons. STX received support after the return of project co-founder Munib Ali to the post of Stacks Labs CEO and ahead of a new Bitcoin Staking round starting October 10. Starknet, meanwhile, launched new incentives for using strkBTC and is preparing another network upgrade.
But behind these events lies a broader trend — BTCFi. Bitcoin holders are increasingly being offered to earn income from their coins, use BTC in DeFi, or apply it to secure other blockchains.
There is an important nuance: Bitcoin itself pays no interest. Income is generated by third-party protocols, and they are structured quite differently.
Stacks pays rewards in bitcoin
In September, Stacks launched the first limited Bitcoin Staking round for institutional participants.
The Genesis Bond program included 21Shares, HashKey Cloud, UTXO Management, and Sypher Capital. According to Stacks, about 230 BTC were locked by September 24, and participants received approximately 0.28 BTC in rewards.
The target yield is about 3% per annum.
The main feature of the scheme is that, with direct participation, bitcoins do not need to be moved to another blockchain or converted into a wrapped token. BTC remains on the Bitcoin network and is locked for a certain period, and rewards are also paid in bitcoins.
Funds for payouts come from the Proof of Transfer mechanism: participants operating the Stacks network spend BTC to receive STX rewards.
However, there is no free lunch here either. Participation requires simultaneously locking STX, so the result also depends on the price of Stacks' own token.
The next Bitcoin Staking round starts on October 10 with a limit of 500 BTC. Infrastructure for institutional clients is also being prepared by U.S. crypto bank Anchorage Digital.
Starknet does the same thing completely differently
Starknet offers a different approach.
A user brings a tokenized version of bitcoin into the network and can send it to staking. As a reward, they receive not BTC but STRK tokens.
The network uses strkBTC — a bitcoin-backed token that can be used in DeFi or sent to liquid staking. Here, too, the target yield is about 3% per annum.
But these are fundamentally different 3%.
In Stacks, the direct option allows you to keep BTC on the Bitcoin mainnet and earn income in bitcoins. In Starknet, the user works with tokenized BTC on another network and receives rewards in STRK.
Therefore, the outcome depends not only on bitcoin but also on the STRK exchange rate, the reliability of the bridge, and DeFi protocols.
The difference is especially evident in STRK's price: over the week, the token grew by about 46%, but it still trades almost 99% below its all-time high.
Why put bitcoin to work at all
The reason for interest in BTCFi is clear. Bitcoin holds roughly $1.7 trillion in capital, but the vast majority simply sits in wallets.
Even if a small share of long-term BTC holders decides to earn income from their coins, a huge market could emerge around it.
Stacks, Starknet, Babylon, and other projects are already competing for this capital. Some offer staking, others use Bitcoin to secure additional networks, and still others allow borrowing against BTC or using it in decentralized finance.
The largest example remains Babylon, where tens of thousands of BTC are currently locked.
But the rise of STX and STRK primarily shows that investors have begun buying the idea of yield-bearing bitcoin again. It does not yet prove that such products will become mainstream.
For a BTC holder, the main question remains the same: where does the promised yield come from, in which asset is it paid, and what additional risk must be taken for a few percent per annum.
