The pioneering alliance combines Bitcoin financial leadership with decentralized intellectual property innovation to unlock new value for creators worldwide.
Seoul, South Korea, October 16, 2025 — Leading Bitcoin DeFi platform Lombard and Story, the first Layer-1 blockchain designed for programmable intellectual property, today announced a strategic partnership aimed at redefining how creators protect and monetize their works through Bitcoin-backed financial products. This collaboration introduces a new model built on transparency, global access, and the enduring value of Bitcoin collateral.
Redefining IP value distribution with Bitcoin
SY Lee, CEO and co-founder of Story, stated: “Access to the global IP economy should not depend on geographic location or intermediaries. By integrating Lombard's Bitcoin infrastructure, Story enables creators and developers to instantly, globally authorize, settle, and protect IP value. With Lombard, these values can now circulate globally in the form of Bitcoin—the most trusted and enduring digital asset. The neutrality and permanence of Bitcoin make it the most efficient means of storing value for intellectual property, opening access for IP holders while aligning the world's knowledge capital with the most powerful currency network.”
Lombard has demonstrated early leadership in the Bitcoin financial sector, transforming Bitcoin from idle capital into productive trading, collateral, and yield-generating assets. Through its flagship BTC asset LBTC, Lombard has brought over $3 billion of idle BTC on-chain, achieving a total locked value of $1 billion in just 92 days – the fastest growth trajectory for yield-bearing tokens in the history of cryptocurrency. LBTC has been integrated into 14 chains and over 75 protocols, with more than 80% of the LBTC supply actively deployed in DeFi applications.
Jacob Phillips, co-founder of Lombard, stated: “The creator economy has long lacked a financial track built for scaling - Bitcoin provides this foundation. Our partnership with Story will provide global creators with the tools to monetize intellectual property with Bitcoin, and will offer Story Bitcoin-backed crypto economic guarantees for IP assets, which is an innovative application. This alliance demonstrates how Bitcoin can serve as the foundation for complex financial products that cater to real use cases across different industries.”
This collaboration will introduce two key innovations to the Story ecosystem:
1 Bitcoin Revenue Distribution: Creators and entertainment studios often have to wait months to receive royalty payments or rely on intermediaries that take a significant commission. Through Lombard's Bitcoin infrastructure, Story can instantly and borderlessly route royalties directly to creators in Bitcoin, eliminating bank delays. Long-term receivables can also be denominated in BTC, protecting IP owners from the inflation impacts that traditional fiat payments cannot withstand.
2 Crypto Economy IP Security: In this pioneering application, the collaboration will explore the use of Bitcoin collateral to provide crypto economic guarantees for IP assets. By binding IP rights to Bitcoin collateral, IP owners gain financial support for enforcing royalty claims. If the licensee defaults or a dispute arises, the collateral can automatically trigger payment. The collateral is settled on-chain, transforming slow and costly legal enforcement into an instant, automated solution.
Korean market leadership
This collaboration has special significance for the Korean market. South Korea is one of the world's most advanced creator economies, and both organizations are positioned to drive transformative change. Story strategically aims to leverage Korea's world-leading creator economy and intellectual property landscape, with cultural IP exports including music, games, films, and animation expected to reach $13.6 billion by 2024. During the Origin Summit at Korea Blockchain Week, Story announced the introduction of major Korean IPs, including “Solo Leveling”, Barunson Studio (the production company of “Parasite”), and the AI-driven gaming platform Verse8, further consolidating Story's core position in the rapidly expanding creator and digital asset economy in Korea.
At the same time, Lombard's $BARD token has quickly become one of the most actively traded BTCFi assets on South Korea's major exchanges Upbit and Bithumb, demonstrating strong demand from both retail and institutional investors for Lombard's innovative Bitcoin products. Building on this success, Lombard recently announced a strategic alliance with the South Korean digital asset company (KODA), which is the leading institutional custodian in South Korea backed by KB Kookmin Bank.
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