WBTC market capitalisation tops $200 million

The total market value of the Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) token pegged to the leading cryptocurrency reached $227 million, according to the BTC on Ethereum service.

WBTC remains the leader in market capitalisation among ‘Bitcoin on Ethereum’. Behind it, by a wide margin, follow renBTC ($27 million), sBTC ($13 million), imBTC ($11.2 million), and other similar projects.

Trend in the total number of ‘Bitcoin on Ethereum’.

For comparison, the capacity of the Lightning Network (LN) at the time of publication stands at 1001 BTC (~$11.2 million). This is 27 times smaller than the volume of Bitcoin tokenised on Ethereum.

According to analytics firm Skew, three months ago WBTC’s market capitalisation was roughly equal to the capacity of the LN network.

WBTC reaching new ATH in market cap. Lightning struggling to get similar traction for now — both were at the same level only 3mths ago. pic.twitter.com/XcesNLbS9q

— skew (@skewdotcom) August 10, 2020

The surge in the price of tokenised bitcoins appears linked to the rapid expansion of the decentralised finance (DeFi) sector, which to date offers broad lending against digital coins, trading of synthetic assets, etc. The vast majority of DeFi services operate on Ethereum.

According to DeFi Market Cap, WBTC ranks 12th among DeFi tokens. According to DeFi Pulse, Wrapped Bitcoin ranks seventh by the value of locked assets.

In July, the popular lending service Compound added support for WBTC.

The possibility of listing Wrapped Bitcoin and several other Ethereum tokens is considering the largest American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

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