Tycho Onnasch
Tycho Onnasch is a technology and product executive with a background in civic technology, Bitcoin infrastructure, decentralized finance, and product development. He is the Co-Founder of Zest Protocol and Head of Bitcoin Strategy at Treasury-BTC, with previous leadership roles at Trust Machines and Deedmob. [6]
Education
Onnasch earned his BA in History and Politics from the University of Oxford. [1]
Career
Onnasch began his career in civic technology as Co-Founder, COO, and Head of Product at Deedmob from 2017 to 2020, where he worked on software connecting nonprofit organizations and volunteers. From 2021 to 2023, he served as General Manager at Trust Machines, where he led product development for Stacks, a Bitcoin Layer 2 network, and worked on Bitcoin decentralized finance research and development. During the same period, he also served as a Mentor at Bitcoin Frontier Fund, supporting founders working on Bitcoin-related projects. Onnasch has served as Co-Founder of Zest Protocol since 2023, where he works on an on-chain lending protocol focused on Bitcoin. Since September 2025, he has also served as Head of Bitcoin Strategy at Treasury-BTC, working on the company's Bitcoin treasury strategy in Europe. [1]
Interview
Europe’s Bitcoin Treasury
In a November 2025 interview with BitcoinYield, Onnasch discussed Bitcoin's development as a financial asset, the emergence of Bitcoin treasury companies, and the role of decentralized finance. He described his path from studying Bitcoin and DeFi to working on Bitcoin infrastructure at Stacks, founding Zest Protocol, and joining Treasury, where he focused on increasing Bitcoin per share and communicating the company's strategy to investors. Onnasch explained that Bitcoin treasury companies had expanded beyond straightforward equity exposure by developing products with different risk and return profiles, potentially broadening access to Bitcoin for institutional investors and debt-focused markets. He also discussed Treasury's efforts to establish a Bitcoin treasury company on a major European exchange, including the legal and financial considerations involved in pursuing a listing and the differences between European and U.S. regulatory environments. Regarding Zest, he described the protocol as a Stacks-based marketplace where users could earn yield on Bitcoin or borrow against it, with yields at the time largely coming from Stacks' dual-stacking rewards, while arguing that Bitcoin's role as collateral could support additional borrowing, liquidity, and financial products across both DeFi and traditional markets. [5]
Breaking Down Bitcoin
In a September 2023 episode of the Partner Path podcast, Onnasch discussed his background, his early exposure to Bitcoin, and his work in decentralized finance. He described growing up in Amsterdam, studying at Oxford, and co-founding a volunteering platform that later developed into a software-as-a-service business. Onnasch explained that DeFi demonstrated how smart contracts could support financial activity without relying entirely on traditional intermediaries, while noting that Bitcoin had remained relatively separate from the early DeFi ecosystem. He discussed his work at Trust Machines and the development of Zest Protocol, including Bitcoin lending and yield products, and identified adoption, responsible lending, and transparency as challenges for Bitcoin-based financial services. The conversation also covered Bitcoin credit, cryptocurrency regulation, institutional participation, potential applications of Bitcoin in data and decentralized computing, mining and renewable energy, central bank digital currencies, and Onnasch's interest in pursuing curiosity-driven work with practical impact. [2]
Presentations
Bitcoin DeFi
In an October 2022 presentation at the Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam, Onnasch discussed the need for financial infrastructure that lets individuals and businesses earning Bitcoin borrow against future income and invest in the present. He described existing Bitcoin credit use cases among market makers, miners managing fiat liabilities against future Bitcoin rewards, and businesses accepting Bitcoin payments, while arguing that failures of centralized lenders such as Celsius and Three Arrows Capital had reduced available credit and exposed weaknesses in opaque lending structures. Onnasch proposed on-chain lending pools in which lending activity and borrower exposure could be publicly audited, with professional delegates underwriting loans and junior capital absorbing initial losses. The proposed Zest Protocol pools would allow liquidity providers to fund Bitcoin lending pools, with the first pool planned for market makers in partnership with Maven 11 and Credora and an indicative target of 4–6% BTC APY. He also outlined a technical structure using hash time-locked contracts and Stacks for Bitcoin deposits and receipt tokens, with pools potentially operating permissionlessly or with access restrictions while borrowers underwent KYC. The presentation identified credit and default risk and smart-contract risk as key considerations, with loans designed to be undercollateralized based on borrowers’ balance sheets and future earnings rather than secured solely by on-chain collateral. [3]
