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Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) today reached historic highs in terms of market capitalization and number of tokens.
WBTC is the most popular version of Bitcoin tokenized for use on the Ethereum network. According to the official website, there is currently a record total of 116,885 WBTCs, supported by an equal number of BTC held by custodians. The WBTC’s market cap now exceeds $ 1.58 billion.
This makes WBTC Ethereum the sixth largest token by market capitalization, after Crypto.com Coin (CRO), USD Coin (USDC), Chainlink (LINK), BNB (BNB) and at number one, Tether USD (USDT).
WBTC climbed the charts last week to outperform Bitfinex’s Compound Dai (cDAI), OKB (OKB) and LEO Token (LEO). WBTC is currently the 18th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization overall.
An ERC-20 token backed 1: 1 by BTC reserves, Wrapped Bitcoin represents 80% per cent of the $ 2 billion worth of BTC on the Ethereum network. To put growth into perspective, there were only 80,000 tokenized bitcoins in mid-September, worth just under $ 1 billion.
Although the recent gains made by BTC also contribute to the increase in WBTC’s market cap, the main factor driving its sudden growth is the increase in demand. WBTC is widely used in DeFi for yield farming, especially among projects with more moderate yields. There are now more than 164,000 BTCs locked in DeFi protocols, which equates to approximately 0.85% of the entire Bitcoin circulating supply.
While the first Wrapped Bitcoin was minted in January 2019, the daily trading volume for the token did not exceed $ 1 million until the end of July this year. Today, WBTC regularly sees trading volume in excess of $ 50 million.
