The Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) protocol, initiated by Bitgo in 2019, holds the title of the most important BTC spinoff venture by market capitalization, and so far, no different venture has exceeded its scale. Nonetheless, the previous few years have seen a major decline within the variety of wrapped bitcoins in circulation, with greater than 32% of its provide being redeemed since November 2021.
WBTC Retains Prime Spot in Bitcoin Derivatives Regardless of Falling Provide
Based on the cryptocurrency market aggregator coingecko.com, wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) ranks because the fifteenth largest crypto asset by market valuation. At the moment, the market cap of WBTC stands at $10.5 billion, with the ERC20 token registering $91.32 million in international commerce quantity over the previous 24 hours. WBTC debuted on Ethereum in January 2019, and every coin is backed 1:1 by bitcoin (BTC). This construction permits customers to make the most of BTC on the Ethereum blockchain and inside decentralized finance (defi) purposes.
Bitgo acts because the custodian for the BTC backing the items, and by 2021, the provision of WBTC had crossed the 200,000 mark. As of Nov. 5, 2021, about 231,659 WBTC had been in circulation. This weekend, the depend stands at 155,849 WBTC, indicating that 75,810 cash have been redeemed over the previous few years. The downward development has endured lately, because the variety of wrapped bitcoins dropped to 161,572 by Nov. 27, 2023, with 5,723 tokens redeemed in that interval.
Regardless of these reductions, WBTC stays the most important BTC spinoff venture. The closest competitor is Binance’s BTCB, which has a circulating provide of 57,192 BTCB and a present market cap of $3.86 billion. Blockstream’s sidechain Liquid encompasses a spinoff bitcoin generally known as LBTC, with 3,865.94 LBTC in circulation this weekend. Avalanche’s BTC spinoff, BTCb, totals 3,544.80 BTCb on the AVAX chain, and RSK’s sidechain has 2,897 RBTC circulating as we speak.
By way of market exercise, WBTC outpaces its rivals. Binance’s BTCB is the second most energetic, seeing $9.85 million in commerce quantity over the past 24 hours. Liquid’s BTC spinoff has not recorded any international commerce quantity, whereas RSK’s RBTC registered trades price $291,231 throughout the identical interval. As the event of layer twos (L2s) accelerates, extra BTC derivatives are rising to problem each established and new contenders, whereas WBTC maintains its important market presence.
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