PANews reported on August 11 that according to ai_9684xtpa monitoring, WBTC currently supports Ethereum/Base/Kave/Osmosis/Tron networks, of which Ethereum mainnet minting accounts for as high as 99.8%. As of today, 154,726 WBTC (worth US$9.45 billion) have been minted, accounting for 0.78% of the total market value of Bitcoin. Dune panel data shows that currently more than 41% of WBTC is used in the lending ecosystem, of which the largest usage scenario (acceptor) is MakerDAO, and nearly 32% is used for direct transactions.

WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) is an ER20 token issued on the Ethereum network, whose value is pegged to Bitcoin at a one-to-one ratio; each WBTC has a corresponding Bitcoin as a reserve, which is managed by a custodian (currently Bitgo) to ensure that WBTC holders can redeem it for Bitcoin at any time. WBTC was first proposed in 2017, and the white paper was officially released and put into use in 2019. By 2020, the scale of locked BTC has exceeded US$2.1 billion.

Earlier news, BitGo and BiT Global have partnered to create a joint venture to diversify WBTC's custody and cold storage businesses across multiple jurisdictions, and BitGo will become a minority shareholder in the new joint venture. The joint venture will continue to use the same BitGo multi-signature technology and cold storage technology used to protect Bitcoin since 2019, with the only difference being the ability to distribute keys in multiple locations around the world. The transition period for this custody change is 60 days. BiT Global is a global custody platform headquartered in Hong Kong, regulated and registered as a Trust and Company Service Provider (TCSP), with a strategic partnership with Justin Sun and the Tron ecosystem.

Subsequently, MakerDAO plans to initiate a proposal to reduce the size of WBTC collateral to cope with the potential risks of changes in custody rights.