In line with a press release on September 3, 21.co, the father or mother firm of 21Shares, launched its Wrapped Bitcoin (21BTC) product on the Ethereum blockchain.
The corporate mentioned it’s working with Circulate Merchants, a number one international market maker, to launch a product that can give clients “peace of thoughts as they discover decentralized functions and new alternatives on the Ethereum blockchain.”
21.co's 21BTC goals to distinguish itself from competing merchandise available in the market because 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, mentioned:
“As one of many world's largest issuers of crypto ETPs, we carry rigorous asset administration finest practices and our operational excellence to the world of packaged belongings, together with institutional custodians and safety protocols.”
Bitcoin wrappers are BTC-backed ERC-20 tokens, issued on totally different blockchains, backed by BTC one-to-one and held by a centralized custodian. To money out, holders burn tokens to get native BTC, whereas mining includes storing native bitcoins to get tokens.
WBTC is going through issues
The launch of 21BTC coincides with the challenges confronted by WBTC, the preferred bitcoin wrapper with a market cap of round $9 billion.
Over the previous month, WBTC has come underneath elevated scrutiny on account of points surrounding BitGo and TRON founder Justin Solar. On August 9, BitGo introduced plans to switch management of WBTC to a three way partnership with cryptocurrency escrow platform BiT World and Solar.
The announcement raised considerations in the neighborhood, significantly relating to Solar's involvement within the mission.
In response, the lending protocol Sky (previously MakerDAO) voted to stop new customers from borrowing towards WBTC, and demand for the asset fell. Dune Analytics knowledge reveals that WBTC provide decreased by greater than 1,000 tokens final month, the third highest month-to-month unfavorable change this yr.
In mild of those developments, a number of opponents, together with Coinbase, wish to problem BitGo market dominance. Additional, the DeFi protocol Threshold proposed merging its BTC “wrapper” token, tBTC, with WBTC in an try to save lots of the extra fashionable BTC product.
