From June 9 to 10, 2026, Bitcoin is being impacted by three directional lines at the same time: on one side, Botanix Labs announced that its Bitcoin Layer 2 experiment Spiderchain, which has been running for nearly four years, will be completely shut down by July 9, 2026, about a year after its mainnet launch. Users must withdraw their assets back to the Bitcoin mainnet before the deadline; otherwise, the project alliance will uniformly collect and manage the overdue funds. The team frankly stated that the actual demand for native DeFi on Bitcoin is limited and that transaction fee income is insufficient. Users are more willing to regard BTC as a static reserve asset; on the other side, Simon Gerovich, CEO of Japan's publicly traded company Metaplanet, disclosed that the company holds 40,177 BTC on its balance sheet and claims to enter the ranks of the third largest corporate BTC treasury in the world, emphasizing that the revenue business surrounding BTC has already brought considerable income; on the same timeline, Huobi HTX announced the latest round of Merkle tree reserve proof as of June 1, 2026, claiming that the reserve ratios of various mainstream assets on the platform are all above 100%, and this disclosure has continued for 44 months, using continuous transparency to respond to outside concerns about its solvency. These three events combined sketch a rather tense picture: the Layer 2 DeFi experiment on Bitcoin is passively withdrawing due to an unsustainable economic model, while enterprises building treasury around BTC and platforms self-certifying their integrity through reserve proof are simultaneously ramping up, with Bitcoin transitioning from "experimenting with new plays on-chain" to "multiple evolutionary paths as a reserve asset and verifiable custody."

Details on the Closure of Bitcoin L2 Botanix

For Botanix Labs, Spiderchain was originally billed as "an experiment lasting nearly four years": the first few years were spent refining the narrative of native Bitcoin DeFi and the design of the Layer 2 architecture, with the mainnet launching about a year ago to attempt to handle more complex financial activities on top of Bitcoin. However, after about a year of operation on the mainnet, Botanix released a public announcement on June 9 to 10, 2026, stating that this experiment would be concluding as planned, and making it clear that Spiderchain would enter the shutdown process.

Regarding the shutdown arrangements, the team provided a clear timeline: the Spiderchain network will be completely closed by July 9, 2026, and users need to withdraw their assets back to the Bitcoin mainnet before this deadline. The announcement also clarified that overdue unextracted funds will not be directly abandoned but will instead be uniformly collected and managed by the Botanix alliance. As for why the "stop key" was pressed, Botanix candidly stated in its public explanation that the actual demand for native Bitcoin DeFi is far lower than their initial judgment, and the transaction fee income generated on Spiderchain is insufficient to cover ongoing operational costs, a more straightforward observation is that users are still more inclined to treat BTC as a long-term reserve asset rather than frequently participating in Bitcoin-based DeFi protocols.

The Cold Start Problem of Native Bitcoin DeFi Seen from a Failed Experiment

Putting Botanix's self-proclaimed "experiment lasting nearly four years" back onto the timeline, it resembles more of a field exploration of the actual demand for native Bitcoin DeFi: the team built a Layer 2 Spiderchain around Bitcoin, hoping to generate native DeFi activities here and sustain the entire network with transaction fees. However, a year into the mainnet operation, the official summary is that "the actual usage demand for Bitcoin-native DeFi is limited" and "fee income is insufficient to support operations." Since public materials did not provide specific trading volumes, wallet counts, or asset sizes, the outside world cannot quantify just how "quiet" this chain is; what is certain is that this long-distance run ended due to an unsustainable economic model, leaving a negative sample in the entire track.

Even more interesting is the behavioral profile provided by the team—users are more willing to treat BTC as a reserve asset rather than frequently engaging in complex financial operations on Layer 2. That is to say, in terms of value narrative, Bitcoin has already been locked into the role of "reserve asset" by mainstream users, and the "high-frequency, complex, and composable financial layer" that native DeFi wants to activate has yet to see a sufficient number of participants appear. Under this premise, how Bitcoin L2 projects articulate their commercial sustainability becomes an unavoidable issue: when on-chain activities are insufficient to generate transaction fees covering node, development, and security costs, and when the project party cannot present a new business model or fee structure at the time of announcing closure, relying on the story of "more use cases will emerge in the future" becomes challenging to be seen as a verifiable business proposition.

Japan's Metaplanet Hoarding 40,000 BTC Calculations

As the story of Bitcoin’s native application layer seems unsustainable with Spiderchain, on the other end, corporate finance is quietly writing "treating BTC as reserves" into the company’s articles. As a publicly traded company in Japan, Metaplanet has publicly announced the inclusion of Bitcoin on its balance sheet and has continued to increase its holdings over the past period. By around June 2026, CEO Simon Gerovich disclosed that the company currently holds 40,177 BTC, thus positioning Metaplanet clearly as the third largest corporate treasury company based on BTC in the world, just behind a few leading institutions.

Gerovich further emphasized that Metaplanet is not merely "buying and locking up," but is laying out revenue-generating businesses around BTC and has already obtained "significant revenue" from them. In other words, under the same Bitcoin narrative, Botanix is "building a chain, waiting for users and transaction fees to pay the bills," while Metaplanet is "first hoarding the coins, then generating revenues through financial and business structures." From the shutdown of Spiderchain due to economic unsustainability to Metaplanet publicly showcasing its BTC treasury and revenue paths during the same time window, the market preference is quite direct: at this stage, building a sustainable cash flow hoarding business model around BTC is seen as a much clearer business proposition than telling an application layer story that hasn’t yet been verified by on-chain activities.

HTX's 44-Month Reserve Proof Trust Bet

If companies stacking BTC on their balance sheets are betting on a "long-term price and revenue" story, then the centralized platforms are wagering on "I can still pay out money anytime." After the collapse of FTX in 2022, the market's tolerance for transparency and solvency of exchanges was reset at once, and reserve proof shifted from a marginal PR tool to one of the core references for users to gauge "whether they can still withdraw their money."

In this context, HTX chose to extend its commitment over time. As of June 1, 2026, the platform announced the latest round of Merkle tree reserve proof covering its mainstream asset categories, with the key information provided by the official statement being just one sentence—"the reserve ratios of all mainstream assets are over 100%," but did not specify the exact percentage of each asset. More narratively significant is the timeline: HTX claims to have continuously disclosed reserve proofs for 44 months, turning this "self-certification" into a customary practice. For users accustomed to storing BTC in centralized custody scenarios, this is equivalent to the platform providing a psychological security deposit off-chain: even if we cannot see the cold wallet addresses and transaction details, at least we can see a fixed-form monthly updated payment commitment. HTX informs the market with 44 months of continuous disclosure that it is willing to continuously bear the cost of disclosure and scrutiny for the expectation of "you can withdraw BTC anytime," which, in a period particularly sensitive to custody trust, is itself a noteworthy trust chip.

Bitcoin in the Era of Hoarding: Who is Still Betting on the Application Layer

Setting Botanix’s hard closure of Spiderchain on July 9, 2026, Metaplanet formally adding 40,177 BTC to its publicly traded company balance sheet around June 2026, and HTX maintaining a reserve ratio of over 100% for mainstream assets with 44 months of Merkle tree reserve proof together, Bitcoin is currently presenting more like an ecological silhouette of "reserve asset + custody trust": in Botanix's experiment, BTC, as Layer 2 underlying asset, did not foster enough vibrant native DeFi demand and transaction fee income, leading the team to admit that users are more willing to treat BTC as a reserve position rather than a frequently participating production commodity; in Metaplanet's narrative, the same BTC is presented on company financial statements, combined with revenue businesses related to BTC, directly upgrading into a corporate-level treasury that can tell a shareholder return story; in HTX's scenario, Bitcoin becomes a centralized custody asset that needs to be constantly proven as "withdrawable and cashable," while long-term PoR is regarded as an institutional tool for rebuilding trust. At least within the current range of publicly available information, native Bitcoin DeFi still struggles to outperform "hoarding + transparent custody" in terms of on-chain activities and revenue narratives, which also indicates that in the short term, track resources are more likely to continue leaning towards corporate treasuries and custody infrastructure. The real variables worth monitoring next are whether Bitcoin L2 can iterate new fee and product models while acknowledging "limited demand," whether more public companies will follow in Metaplanet's footsteps to make BTC a main narrative asset, and whether PoR will be compelled to transition from voluntary disclosure to rigid industry standards as regulatory interventions deepen.

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