Sui is preparing to launch Hashi, an institutional lending network designed to let bitcoin holders use their BTC as collateral without transferring the underlying asset away from the Bitcoin blockchain. According to CoinDesk, the project is expected to begin a phased mainnet rollout later this month with $500 million in capital commitments from more than 20 industry partners.
The commitments are intended to give Hashi meaningful liquidity from its first day of operation. They are pledges rather than deposits already placed into the network, but the backing is designed to help lending and borrowing markets start with available capital instead of building liquidity from zero.
Hashi is being developed on Sui, a layer-1 blockchain. Its stated focus is institutional users, including companies and other large holders that want to generate financing from their bitcoin while retaining the asset’s native position on the Bitcoin network. Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and chief product officer of Mysten Labs, the original creator of Sui, said in the project’s announcement that institutions want to use bitcoin productively without giving up the safeguards they require.
Bringing dormant bitcoin into finance
Sui estimates that around $1 trillion worth of bitcoin is currently inactive. Hashi is targeting that pool of holdings, particularly bitcoin owned by institutions and companies that have so far lacked what the project describes as a compliant and transparent way to use their native BTC in decentralized finance, or DeFi.
DeFi refers to financial applications built on blockchains, including lending, borrowing and trading services. In a conventional cross-chain arrangement, an asset may be moved or represented through a bridge on another network. Hashi’s model is designed to avoid moving the actual bitcoin off Bitcoin’s ledger.
The project’s launch comes as bitcoin-backed borrowing is being used for purposes beyond crypto-market speculation. The source material identifies examples including university tuition, property purchases and corporate working capital. Nathan McCauley, chief executive and co-founder of Anchorage Digital, a launch partner that also plans to provide stablecoin liquidity, said public companies and institutions hold substantial bitcoin but have been limited by the technology available to use it.
How Hashi is designed to work
Under the proposed system, a user’s BTC is locked in a vault address directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. The address is protected by a 2-of-2 multisignature arrangement, meaning both of Hashi’s validators must provide cryptographic approval for a transaction. A separate guardian layer is intended to monitor collateral movements and slow activity that appears suspicious.
Once the bitcoin is deposited and secured, Hashi creates hBTC on Sui. This token is described as a digital voucher backed directly by the bitcoin held in the vault. The original BTC remains frozen on the Bitcoin network while hBTC can be used by applications on Sui.
Those applications are expected to support lending, borrowing, credit markets and trading in real-world assets. When a user wants to withdraw, the hBTC voucher is permanently destroyed on Sui. That action triggers the multisignature process to unlock and return the original bitcoin on the Bitcoin network.
The arrangement is intended to address a central challenge for institutional bitcoin finance: allowing BTC to serve as collateral while preserving a direct connection to the underlying asset. It also separates the location of the collateral from the blockchain where lending activity takes place.
Security checks and market picture
Hashi has undergone reviews aimed at meeting institutional security and compliance requirements. Certora formally verified its smart contracts, while CommonPrefix reviewed the cryptography used in the project’s multi-party computation protocol.
Moneyiar market data at 11:04 a.m. on October 9, 2026, showed Bitcoin at $82,434.62, down 0.17% over 24 hours and 4.56% over seven days. Sui’s SUI token was trading at $1.0561, down 5.77% in 24 hours and 10.27% over the week. Allora stood at $0.2456, down 4.34% over 24 hours and 8.10% over seven days, while Loaded Lions was at $0.001384, down 3.48% and 11.43% over the same periods.
Hashi’s planned rollout therefore arrives alongside a sizeable pool of bitcoin that Sui says is unused and a pledged capital base intended to support activity at launch. The network’s ability to attract institutional users will depend on how its custody structure, validator controls, collateral token and lending applications operate once the phased mainnet deployment begins.
