Thanks to the ongoing decentralized finance [DeFi] boom, tokenized Bitcoin has captured the market sentiment like never before. With its growing popularity among investors, several exchanges were now delving deeper by listing these tokens to allow BTC to participate in decentralized finance. Adding to this trend, leading cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase also announced support for the synthetic version of Bitcoin that runs on Ethereum – Wrapped Bitcoin [WBTC] on its platform.
Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) is launching at https://t.co/bCG11KMQ6s and in the iOS and Android apps within the next 15 minutes. You may need to refresh your app to properly buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store WBTC. We will update when WBTC is fully live https://t.co/TsjLBniove
— Coinbase (@coinbase) October 21, 2020
According to Coinbase official release, stated,
“Starting today, Coinbase supports Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) at Coinbase.com and in the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Coinbase customers can now buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store WBTC. WBTC is available in all Coinbase-supported regions, with the exception of New York State.”
Coinbase has a great track record of building new tools for the community and is a widely recognized global platform. This step is certainly a major milestone for the tokenized asset and more broadly for the DeFi space.
Why the traction?
Wrapped Bitcoin or WBTC, as it is popularly known as, enables users to lock up BTC in exchange for WBTC. This is essentially an ERC-20 token pegged to Bitcoin and allows BTC holders to access the growing Ethereum-driven decentralized finance [DeFi] space using it as collateral. The increasing demand evidenced the fact that the investors were capitalizing on the rising number of opportunities for using pseudo-BTC in the DeFi ecosystem.
It wasn’t until August that tokenized Bitcoins gained traction. While the supply of this form of tokens has grown at an astonishing pace, which has led to several platforms offering alternate tokenized bitcoin products, it is, however, WBTC that remains the undisputed leader that has been currently dominating the charts.
First started by BitGo, Ren, and Kyber, over the past couple of months, WBTC has become the most popular synthetic version of Bitcoin holding more than 70% of the market share.