I have held BTC for years and always hated the tradeoff. Either you sit on spot and do nothing, or you sell some to chase yield. Wrapped BTC options exist, but they always felt like extra hops and extra things that can go wrong.
That’s why the cbBTC support in Falcon Finance actually changed how I use my Bitcoin.
I deposited cbBTC directly into the vault, minted USDf against it at a conservative ratio, and that was it. My BTC exposure stays intact, but now the USDf is out working, lending pools, perps collateral, whatever makes sense at the time.
My current position is mostly cbBTC with a bit of ETH mixed in. The haircut on cbBTC isn’t aggressive, but it’s fair. There’s plenty of buffer, and even during some sharp intraday dumps, the position never came close to danger. It’s still Bitcoin underneath, just tokenized in a way the protocol is comfortable trusting.
What surprised me was how much yield you can stack on top once the USDf is minted. That stable liquidity goes straight into strategies that actually pay. And because I never sold the BTC, I still get full upside if price moves. It’s not leverage for the sake of leverage, it’s just making idle BTC do something.
The flow itself is clean. No weird bridges. No bouncing between wrappers. You send cbBTC, mint USDf, and you’re done. If liquidations ever happen, they run through Falcon’s internal Dutch auction, so value gets recovered efficiently. Any excess feeds into the surplus buffer, which just keeps getting stronger over time.
I have noticed more long-term Bitcoin holders doing the same thing. People who avoided DeFi entirely are now comfortable using this setup because they’re not touching their principal. More high quality BTC collateral comes in, the system gets more resilient, and risk actually goes down instead of up.
Unwinding is straightforward too. If I want out, I burn USDf and withdraw my cbBTC. No lockups. No waiting. No gates. The loop closes cleanly.
For anyone who’s been sitting on Bitcoin and watching yields elsewhere but refusing to sell or mess with sketchy wrappers, this is the first setup that feels reasonable. You keep your BTC, you get dollar liquidity, and you put that liquidity to work, all inside a system that’s already proven it can survive volatility.
For the first time, it feels like Bitcoin holders aren’t just spectators in DeFi.
