Stacks (STX) has surged by more than 100% over 90 days amid renewed interest in the ecosystem and the launch of institutional Bitcoin staking. According to CoinGecko, on October 6, STX was trading around $0.38, gaining 18% over the week, and had risen by 108% over the 90 days leading up to September 27. The rally coincided with Muneeb Ali's return to Stacks Labs as CEO on September 30 and the launch of the first institutional Bitcoin staking bond.
In the direct model, a participant locks BTC on Bitcoin's first layer and separately deposits STX into Stacks. The STX requirement is about 5% of the BTC position's value: a participant with $1 million in BTC deposits about $50,000 in STX. The more Bitcoin goes through this route, the more STX is needed. Genesis Bond demonstrated this in practice: 230 BTC and 3.57 million STX, with participants receiving 0.28 BTC over two weeks. Among them were 21Shares, HashKey Cloud, UTXO Management, and Sypher Capital. Importantly, the declared STX is not necessarily purchased on the market.
At the rate on October 2 (1 STX ≈ 0.00000439 BTC), a position in 1,000 BTC requires about 11.38 million STX, in 5,000 BTC about 56.89 million, and 10,000 BTC about 113.77 million tokens, which is equivalent to approximately 6.1% of the 1.87 billion STX in circulation. These are scenarios, not forecasts.
Bond 2 is set to start around October 10: most will go through liquid staking, with a large allocation going to StackingDAO, and Xverse and 21Shares also participating. Liquid staking issues stBTC on top of the position, allowing it to be used in other applications, whereas self-custody locks BTC on the first layer. In the roadmap for 2027-2032, Bitcoin staking becomes a foundational yield layer, with STX supporting positions and paying for transactions on the network.
This material is prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation.
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