Lombard and Story Partner to Revolutionize Creator Economy via Bitcoin-Backed Infrastructure

[PRESS RELEASE – Seoul, South Korea, October 16th, 2025]

Pioneering Alliance Combines Bitcoin Finance Management with Decentralized Mental Property Innovation to Unlock New Worth for International Creators

Lombard, the main Bitcoin DeFi platform, and Story, the primary Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built to make mental property programmable, in the present day introduced a strategic partnership to redefine how creators defend and monetize their work by means of Bitcoin-backed monetary merchandise. Regardless of the surge in digital content material creation, most creators nonetheless face sluggish, opaque, and platform-dependent payout methods that restrict attribution, pace, and truthful compensation. This partnership introduces a mannequin constructed for transparency, international entry, and lasting worth assured by Bitcoin.

Redefining IP Worth Distribution with Bitcoin

Story is pioneering programmable mental property, turning copyrights, knowledge, and artistic property into programmable, on-chain primitives that may be robotically licensed, remixed, and monetized. Because it scales into the core IP infrastructure for the web, integrating with Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure extends Story’s capabilities into finance, permitting creators to not solely license but in addition obtain and safe worth instantly in Bitcoin.

“Entry to the worldwide IP financial system shouldn’t rely on geography or intermediaries. By integrating Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure, Story permits creators and builders to license, settle, and safe IP worth immediately and globally. With Lombard, that worth can now stream internationally as Bitcoin, essentially the most trusted and sturdy digital asset. Bitcoin’s neutrality and permanence make it some of the environment friendly retailer of worth for mental property, and opens up entry for IP holders whereas aligning the world’s mental capital with its strongest financial community” SY Lee, CEO & Co-founder of Story. 

Lombard has demonstrated early management in Bitcoin finance, remodeling Bitcoin from idle capital into productive buying and selling, collateral, and yield-generating property. Via LBTC, its flagship BTC asset, Lombard has onboarded over $3billion beforehand idle BTC onchain, attaining $1 billion in complete worth locked in simply 92 days – the quickest development trajectory of any yield-bearing token in crypto historical past. LBTC is built-in into 14 chains and 75+ protocols, with greater than 80% of LBTC provide actively deployed in DeFi functions.

“The creator financial system has lacked monetary rails constructed for scale—Bitcoin offers that basis. Our partnership with Story will present international creators with instruments to monetize their mental property with Bitcoin, and supply Story with Bitcoin-backed crypto-economic ensures for IP property in a first-of-its-kind software. The alliance demonstrates how Bitcoin can function the muse for advanced monetary merchandise that serve real-world use instances throughout numerous industries.” mentioned Jacob Phillips, Co-Founding father of Lombard.

The partnership will introduce two vital improvements to the Story ecosystem:

• Bitcoin Income Distribution: Creators and leisure studios usually wait months for royalty funds or depend on intermediaries that take giant cuts. Via Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure, Story can route royalties on to creators in Bitcoin immediately, borderlessly, and with out banking delays. Longer-term receivables can be denominated in BTC, defending IP homeowners towards inflation that conventional fiat payouts can not. This aligns with a broader shift in leisure and sports activities the place prime names more and more request Bitcoin compensation to protect worth globally, and Lombard makes that attainable at scale.
• Crypto-Financial IP Safety: In a first-of-its-kind software, the partnership will discover the usage of Bitcoin collateral to supply crypto-economic ensures for IP property. By tying IP rights to Bitcoin collateral, IP homeowners get a monetary backstop that enforces royalty claims. If a licensee defaults or disputes come up, the collateralized ensures can robotically set off payouts. If a licensee defaults, the collateral is liquidated onchain, which turns sluggish and dear authorized enforcement into an prompt, automated decision. The result’s insurance-like safety for creators with clear settlement. Bitcoin is the one asset that’s giant and liquid sufficient to function dependable collateral, remodeling IP into an asset class with built-in financial ensures.

Korean Market Management

The partnership holds explicit significance for the Korean market, one of many world’s most superior creator economies, the place each organizations are positioned to drive transformative change. Story is strategically positioned to capitalize on Korea’s world-leading creator financial system and mental property panorama, the place cultural IP exports, together with music, gaming, movie, and animation, reached $13.6 billion in 2024 Coming off the again of Origin Summit throughout Korea Blockchain Week, the place Story introduced the onboarding of main Korean IPs together with Solo Leveling (a world phenomenon with over 10 billion views throughout its webtoon, anime, and gaming variations), Barunson Studio (the producer behind Parasite), and the AI-powered gaming platform Verse8, the combination with Lombard additional cements Story’s place on the heart of Korea’s quickly increasing creator and digital-asset financial system.The nation’s creators and leisure corporations are more and more in search of revolutionary options to guard and monetize their mental property throughout worldwide markets.

In the meantime, Lombard has established robust momentum with the $BARD token quickly turning into some of the actively traded BTCFi property on main Korean exchanges Upbit and Bithumb, demonstrating important retail and institutional urge for food for Lombard’s revolutionary Bitcoin-focused merchandise.

Constructing on this success, Lombard lately introduced a strategic alliance with Korea Digital Asset (KODA), the nation’s premier institutional custodian backed by KB Kookmin Financial institution, to develop compliant entry and distribution channels for Bitcoin yield merchandise in regulated monetary markets.

About Lombard

Lombard is the main Bitcoin finance protocol, accelerating Bitcoin’s evolution from idle capital to the muse of productive buying and selling, collateral, and yield era. Via its flagship LBTC asset, Lombard has onboarded over $3 billion of BTC throughout 14 chains and 75+ protocols, attaining the quickest development trajectory to $1 billion of any yield-bearing asset. Lombard has established strategic partnerships with main establishments globally, together with KODA, Franklin Templeton, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Upbit, Bybit and extra.

About Story

Story is a Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built to make mental property programmable. Backed by $136 million from a16z, Polychain, and Samsung Ventures, Story launched its mainnet in early 2025 and has rapidly change into a number one infrastructure for tokenized IP. The community permits creators, builders, enterprises, and AI labs to register content material as on-chain property with embedded rights, turning media, knowledge, and AI-generated works into legally enforceable digital property. By bridging the hole between outdated authorized frameworks and the realities of the AI period, Story makes it attainable to trace provenance, automate licensing, and unlock new markets for concepts. As the muse for IP’s evolution into an internet-native asset class, Story powers a extra open, equitable, and composable artistic financial system.

This press launch comprises forward-looking statements concerning the partnership and its potential influence. Precise outcomes might range primarily based on market situations and partnership implementation.