WBTC today reached the highest market capitalization and number of tokens in history.
WBTC stands for ERC20 version of Bitcoin, based on the Ethereum network. According to the official website, there are currently a record 116,885 WBTC, and the custodian holds the same amount of Bitcoin. The market value of WBTC currently exceeds $1.58 billion.
In terms of market value, WBTC is the sixth largest token on Ethereum, second only to Crypto.com Coin (CRO), USD Coin (USDC), Chainlink (LINK), BNB (BNB) and the number one Tether USD ( USDT).
In the past week, WBTC’s ranking has risen, surpassing Compound Dai (cDAI), OKB (OKB) and Bitfinex’s LEO token (LEO). In terms of market value, WBTC is currently the 18th largest cryptocurrency in the world.
WBTC is an ERC-20 token, backed by a 1:1 Bitcoin reserve. WBTC accounts for 80% of the $2 billion worth of Bitcoin on the Ethereum network. From a growth perspective, only 80,000 bitcoins were tokenized in mid-September, worth less than $1 billion.
Although Bitcoin’s recent rise has driven the market value of WBTC to rise, the main factor driving its sudden growth is growing demand. WBTC is widely used in DeFi for liquidity mining, especially for projects with stable returns. There are currently more than 164,000 bitcoins locked in the DeFi protocol, accounting for about 0.85% of the total bitcoin circulation.
Although the first WBTC was minted in January 2019, it was not until the end of July this year that the daily trading volume of WBTC exceeded $1 million. Today, WBTC’s trading volume often exceeds US$50 million.
