What to know : Circle's wrapped version of bitcoin is live on Ethereum as the stablecoin company takes on Coinbase for dominance of the synthetic BTC market. Circle is pitching cirBTC to institutions that focus their crypto allocation on bitcoin and may be familiar with Circle and trust its infrastructure because of its position in the stablecoin market. Total synthetic bitcoin market cap hovers between $12.5 billion and $13.5 billion, demonstrating it is still a niche area.
Circle Internet's (CRCL) wrapped version of bitcoin , cirBTC, is live on Ethereum as the company best known for its dollar-pegged stablecoin takes on Coinbase (COIN) for dominance of the synthetic BTC market.
The New York-based firm said it developed cirBTC, a token backed 1:1 by the world's largest cryptocurrency, to allow traders to access their bitcoin wealth in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, including lending, decentralized exchange (DEXs), tokenized assets and stablecoins.
Synthetic, or wrapped, bitcoin tokens exist to address the historical lack of provision for DeFi activities on the Bitcoin network. Many cryptocurrency users prefer to hold only bitcoin because it is worth more than every other crypto combined. But using it for DeFi is challenging because that Bitcoin lacks the native programmability of networks like Ethereum.
The first token to cross the divide, wrapped bitcoin (wBTC), was introduced in 2019 and remains the largest, with a market cap of around $7.3 billion. Coinbase's (COIN) cbBTC, which appeared in 2024, sits at just under $5.4 billion.
Circle is pitching cirBTC to institutions that may focus their crypto allocation on BTC and are familiar with the company and trust its infrastructure due to its visibility in the stablecoin market. Circle's USDC is the second-largest stablecoin on the market with a cap of over $75 billion.
The introduction of cirBTC could see Circle going head to head with Coinbase and wBTC's primary custodian, BitGo Holdings (BTGO), for dominance of the institutional synthetic BTC market.
The market cap of all synthetic bitcoin tokens combined hovers between $12.5 billion and $13.5 billion, representing about 1% of bitcoin's total value of around $1.25 trillion.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
