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Ethereum is still the most popular off-chain destination for bitcoin (BTC) as the total supply of tokenized BTC reached 150,000 BTC ($ 2.05 billion) at the end of October, up 21% since September.
However, growth has slowed significantly since the decentralized finance craze (DeFi) peaked towards the end of the third quarter. According to data from Dune Analytics analyzed by CoinDesk, around $ 360 million of bitcoins were tokenized in October, significantly less than the $ 737 million tokenized in September.
The main reason for the slower growth has been a sharp drop in yield agriculture profitability since the peak in September, according to Ryan Watkins, a bitcoin analyst at Messari.
“Both Curve Farms and Uniswap have been big growth engines,” Watkins told CoinDesk. “Both yields have fallen significantly since the peak in September.”
Notably, the pace of tokenization still exceeded the mining issuance rate for the third consecutive month, although the October margin was significantly lower than that of August or September. 26,256 BTC were mined in October, according to Coin Metrics, while 26,267 BTC were tokenized in the same period.
Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), the largest tokenized bitcoin project controlling over 80% of the market, minted nearly 26,000 bitcoin-backed ERC-20 tokens in October. Over 56,000 new WBTCs were issued in September.
Smaller tokenized bitcoin projects also experienced significant growth in October, most notably tBTC, which was relaunched by Thesis in late September, as reported by CoinDesk. Within the first month of its relaunch, the tBTC offering of bitcoin-backed tokens reached a value of over $ 10 million. Users also minted and burned over 5,000 BTC during the same period.
To date, the current supply of all tokenized bitcoins is over 152,000 BTC, according to Dune Analytics, worth around $ 2.3 billion and over 18,000% since January.
