Cardano SPO16 October 2026 · Cardano Q&A
Cardano Q&A recap, 16th October 2026
Friday's Cardano Q&A was about one question: can you put Bitcoin to work on Cardano without selling it? We went through what is live today, what is still being built, and the Cardano apps where people are already earning on their holdings. The long version of the Bitcoin story is in our companion post; this is the rundown with a link for each topic.
Bitcoin DeFi on Cardano - earning on BTC without selling it
https://pool.fluid7.com/blog/bitcoin-defi-on-cardano
The idea is simple. Rather than selling Bitcoin to free up capital, you lock it as collateral and borrow against it, so you keep the BTC and its upside. In many places borrowing is not treated as a sale for tax purposes, which is a big part of the appeal, though that depends on where you live and is worth checking for yourself. The risk is the loan-to-value ratio: borrow too close to the limit and a sharp fall in the Bitcoin price can trigger liquidation, so how much you borrow should depend on how volatile the market is at the time. Our companion post separates what is live from what is still a demo or a proposal.
Pogun - IOG's Bitcoin DeFi platform
https://momentum.cardano.iog.io/proposals/pogun
Pogun is IOG's planned Bitcoin credit market, yield app and trust-minimised bridge. Its treasury funding was voted down by DReps in May, but the team has kept building and published a mainnet prototype of its collateral system in August. It is not live yet; there is a waitlist on the site if you want to follow it.
BitcoinOS - BOS
BitcoinOS takes a different route to the same goal, using zero-knowledge proofs rather than a custodian to move Bitcoin to Cardano and back. It has been demonstrated but is not yet a production service. With several teams building bridges, the call made the point that it is worth understanding how each one secures your coins before trusting any of them.
FluidTokens - Bitcoin DeFi that is live today
https://app.fluidtokens.com/btc/staking
FluidTokens is the part of this you can use now. The Cardano-native team runs non-custodial lending and staking for Bitcoin-native assets such as Ordinals and Runes, and in March it carried out the first native Bitcoin-to-ADA atomic swap. Much of the activity settles on Bitcoin's own layer, and the volumes are early, but it is real.
RealFi - a yield-bearing stablecoin on Cardano mainnet
RealFi's stablecoin, USDrf, is backed by real-world lending, and staking it as sUSDrf earns a yield from that lending. We walked through how to get it, including swapping for it on a Cardano DEX. Rates are variable and eligibility depends on where you are, so check RealFi's own pages for current terms.
Strike Finance - borrowing and earning on Cardano
https://app.strikefinance.org/borrow-and-earn
Strike is best known for perpetuals, but its borrow-and-earn side lets you lend assets to earn a yield or borrow against what you hold. We looked at it as a working example of on-chain lending on Cardano. As with any lending product, read the documentation and understand the liquidation rules first.
SundaeSwap - liquidity provision and yield farming
https://app.sundae.fi/yield-farming
SundaeSwap is a Cardano DEX. Providing liquidity to a pool earns a share of the trading fees, and yield farming adds rewards on top. The trade-off to understand is impermanent loss: if the two assets in a pool move apart in price, you can end up worse off than if you had simply held them.
Veridian - digital identity, now an independent company
https://x.com/Cardano_CF/status/2108044721410953268
Veridian is the digital identity platform built by the Cardano Foundation, which has now spun it out as an independent company. Identity is one of the less flashy uses of a blockchain, but it is a necessary piece for bringing real-world assets on-chain. We will look at what the commercial launch means in a future call.
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