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Based on a Sept. 3 assertion, 21.co, the mum or dad firm of 21Shares, has launched its Wrapped Bitcoin product (21BTC) on the Ethereum blockchain.
The corporate said that it was collaborating with Move Merchants, a number one international market maker, to launch a product that will give clients “peace of thoughts as they discover decentralized functions and new alternatives on the Ethereum blockchain.”
21.co’s 21BTC goals to vary from competing merchandise available in the market as a result of it securely shops the underlying belongings in chilly storage, eliminating the necessity for a bridge.
Eliezer Ndinga, head of technique and enterprise growth at 21.co, said:
“As one of many world’s largest issuers of crypto ETPs, we deliver stringent asset administration greatest practices and our operational excellence to the world of wrapped belongings, involving institutional-grade custodians and safety protocols.”
Bitcoin wrappers are ERC-20 tokens backed by BTC, issued on varied blockchains, backed one-to-one by BTC, and held by a centralized custodian. To redeem, holders burn the tokens to obtain native BTC, whereas minting entails depositing native Bitcoin to obtain the tokens.
WBTC faces struggles
The launch of 21BTC coincides with challenges confronted by WBTC, the preferred Bitcoin wrapper with a market capitalization of roughly $9 billion.
Over the previous month, WBTC has been underneath elevated scrutiny resulting from points involving BitGo and TRON founder Justin Solar. On Aug. 9, BitGo introduced plans to switch management of WBTC to a three way partnership with crypto custody platform BiT International and Solar.
This announcement raised issues inside the group, notably about Solar’s involvement within the venture.
In response, the lending protocol Sky (previously MakerDAO) voted to cease new customers from borrowing in opposition to WBTC, and demand for the asset declined. Dune Analytics knowledge exhibits that WBTC’s provide decreased by over 1,000 tokens final month, marking the third-highest month-to-month adverse change this yr.
In mild of those developments, a number of opponents, together with Coinbase, are in search of to problem BitGo’s market dominance. Additional, DeFi protocol Threshold has proposed merging its BTC “wrapper” token, tBTC, with WBTC in an effort to save lots of the extra well-liked BTC product.
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