# Dive into the Bitcoin DeFi Ecosystem


By [minggui ](https://paragraph.com/@minggui) · 2022-05-26

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_A version of this presentation was first presented at the Stacks Foundation’s Bitcoin Innovation Virtual Summit on 24 February 2022. You can watch a replay of the event on YouTube_ [_here_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTe6jAs6m2k)_._ 

[Bitcoin](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin) is the granddaddy of all blockchains, and was built to be a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash (that) would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”. Thus far, Bitcoin has proven to be pretty resilient, and with the introduction of the [Lightning Network](https://lightning.network/), is also starting to scale to become viable for micro-transactions as well. 

However, payments should just serve as the starting point, and there are many other tradfi verticals left to conquer. The advent of smart contracts, particularly on [Ethereum](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ethereum), has enabled an entirely new world of decentralized finance (or [DeFi](https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/decentralized-finance-defi) for short) to be built and deployed, allowing crypto users access to other financial service verticals directly on-chain, in a permissionless and trustless manner, the same way payments on Bitcoin are executed.

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*Originally published on [minggui ](https://paragraph.com/@minggui/dive-into-the-bitcoin-defi-ecosystem)*