A friend of mine keeps his Bitcoin like a photo in a wallet. He pulls it out, checks the price, and puts it back fast. One night I asked, “Does it earn while you sleep?” He blinked. “It’s Bitcoin,” he said. “You don’t do stuff with it.” That line stuck with me.
Bitcoin is great at being scarce and hard to fake. It can move across borders with a few taps. But it does not pay rent. If you want yield, meaning extra value over time, you often trade your BTC away, lend it, or wrap it into some other coin and use DeFi. DeFi just means money tools run by code, not a bank desk. Those paths can work. They can also end in hacks, bad loans, or frozen exits. So the dream is plain: keep BTC, keep control, and still earn. Well, it’s not free money, you know? It’s rent for taking risk and doing the boring work. This is where the idea of BTC staking walks in, kind of sideways. Bitcoin itself does not run on staking. It uses miners. But projects like Babylon aim to let BTC help secure other proof-of-stake chains. Proof-of-stake is where a chain is kept safe by staked coins and the people who run them. Your BTC acts like a bond that backs that work. If it goes right, you may earn rewards without swapping out of Bitcoin.
Still, if your BTC is tied up, are you stuck? Lorenzo Protocol tries to dodge that fear by giving you a token back. People call it a liquid staking token, or LST. Liquid means it can move. With Lorenzo, the common one is stBTC. It’s meant to represent staked BTC and be redeemable for BTC at a 1:1 rate, based on how the setup is described. At first, the “stand-in token” idea felt like a coat check ticket. Then I got it. The ticket is not the coat, but it lets you keep walking while the coat is stored. Lorenzo can also split the stake into two pieces in some designs. Some write-ups call these Liquid Principal Tokens and Yield Accruing Tokens, or LPT and YAT. Principal is your main BTC claim. Yield is the drip you earn as staking runs.
So “yield without selling” is a workflow, not a spell. Stake BTC. Receive stBTC. Keep BTC-like exposure through that token. Let rewards build in the background. And since stBTC is a token, it can be used on chain. You might post it as collateral, which is just a pledge, so you can borrow. Or you might put it in pools where people trade and share fees. In theory, your BTC stays your base asset while it does a side job. But side jobs have risks. Smart contract risk is the big one. Code can fail. Peg risk matters too, since stBTC can trade below BTC when fear spikes or exits get slow. And staking systems can have slashing, a penalty if the actors who run the setup break rules. So the real question is not “What’s the yield?” It’s “What could break, and can I handle that day?” BANK sits one layer up. It’s the token tied to Lorenzo itself, used for voting on rules and shaping rewards. Some explainers point to a lock model called veBANK, where locking BANK for time may boost your voice or your cut. Locking just means you agree not to sell for a while. It doesn’t make the system safe. It can, at best, push more people to care about the long game. My friend asked if this makes Bitcoin a bank account. I told him no. It’s more like letting your quiet rock grow moss. Slow. A bit messy. But it means BTC can stay BTC, and still do work, without you having to sell the thing you came to trust.
@Lorenzo Protocol #LorenzoProtocol $BANK
