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

Pioneering Alliance Combines Bitcoin Finance Leadership with Decentralized Intellectual Property Innovation to Unlock New Value for Global Creators

Lombard, the leading Bitcoin DeFi platform, and Story, the first Layer-1 blockchain created for programmable intellectual property, have announced a strategic collaboration to change how creators secure and monetize their assets through Bitcoin-backed financial solutions. This partnership is positioned to address the slow, complex, and platform-centric payout structures that creators often endure. The new model promises increased transparency, global accessibility, and sustained value ensured by Bitcoin.

Redefining IP Value Distribution with Bitcoin

Story is trailblazing the field of programmable intellectual property by turning copyrights and creative assets into on-chain components that can automate licensing and monetization. Integrating with Lombard’s Bitcoin machinery extends Story’s financial potential, allowing creators to license, receive, and secure value directly in Bitcoin.

“Access to the global IP economy shouldn’t depend on geography or intermediaries. By integrating Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure, Story enables creators and developers to license, settle, and secure IP value instantly and globally. With Lombard, that value can now flow across the world as Bitcoin, the most trusted and durable digital asset. Bitcoin’s neutrality and permanence make it one of the most efficient store of value for intellectual property, and opens up access for IP holders while aligning the world’s intellectual capital with its strongest monetary network.” – SY Lee, CEO & Co-founder of Story

Lombard has shown pioneering success in the Bitcoin finance sector, converting dormant Bitcoin into active trading, collateral, and yield-generating resources. With its primary token, LBTC, Lombard has successfully onboarded over $3 billion of previously idle BTC, locking in $1 billion total value within just 92 days—the fastest growth of any yield-bearing token in the history of crypto.

“The creator economy has lacked financial rails built for scale—Bitcoin provides that foundation. Our partnership with Story will provide global creators with tools to monetize their intellectual property with Bitcoin and provide Story with Bitcoin-backed crypto-economic guarantees. This alliance illustrates how Bitcoin can underpin complex financial products addressing real-world use cases across various sectors.” – Jacob Phillips, Co-Founder of Lombard

This partnership will bring two essential innovations to the Story platform:

1. Bitcoin Revenue Distribution: Creators often wait a long time for royalty payments or rely on intermediaries who take substantial cuts. Lombard’s Bitcoin infrastructure enables Story to funnel royalties directly to creators instantly and globally without banking delays. Additionally, long-term receivables can also be paid in BTC, offering IP owners protection from inflation that traditional fiat payments cannot. This shift aligns with a growing trend in entertainment where high-profile individuals are increasingly requesting Bitcoin remuneration to preserve their value.

2. Crypto-Economic IP Security: This partnership will explore using Bitcoin as collateral to provide economic assurances for IP assets. By linking IP rights to Bitcoin collateral, creators secure a financial safeguard for their royalty claims. If there’s a dispute, the collateralized guarantees can automatically trigger payouts, turning slow and expensive legal processes into instant, automated resolutions. Bitcoin’s liquidity and size chief it as the only asset capable of serving as dependable collateral, evolving IP into an asset class fortified with built-in economic guarantees.

Korean Market Leadership

The importance of this partnership is amplified in the Korean market, recognized as one of the leading creator economies globally, where both firms are poised to drive significant progress. Story stands ready to leverage Korea’s prominent creator economy and intellectual property dynamics, where cultural IP exports—in areas including music, gaming, film, and animation—generated $13.6 billion in revenue in 2024. Following the Origin Summit during Korea Blockchain Week, where Story revealed the onboarding of major Korean IPs, this integration with Lombard solidifies Story’s status at the core of Korea’s booming creator and digital asset landscape.

Meanwhile, Lombard has gained considerable momentum, with the $BARD token rapidly becoming popular on leading Korean exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb, reflecting strong interest from both retail and institutional investors in Lombard’s Bitcoin-focused offerings.

Additionally, Lombard recently announced a strategic alliance with Korea Digital Asset (KODA) to construct compliant access and distribution routes for Bitcoin yield products across regulated financial markets.

About Lombard

Lombard is the premier Bitcoin finance protocol, transforming Bitcoin from idle resources into the basis for productive trading, collateral, and yield generation, with its flagship LBTC asset having onboarded over $3 billion across 14 chains and 75+ protocols, achieving record speed to $1 billion for any yield-bearing asset.

About Story

Story is a Layer-1 blockchain designed for the purpose of making intellectual property programmable. Financed with $136 million from prominent investors, Story launched its mainnet in early 2025 and has positioned itself as a substantial infrastructure provider for tokenized IP, enabling various stakeholders to register assets as on-chain properties with associated rights.

This press release contains forward-looking statements about the partnership and its potential effects. Actual outcomes may vary based on market conditions and the execution of the partnership.