WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) — bitcoin as an Ethereum token

WBTC in plain words

Bitcoin works only on its own network. Many crypto services, such as loans and swaps, run on another network, Ethereum, on smart contracts, that is, programs inside the network that carry out set rules on their own. Bitcoin can't get there directly (Bitcoin, Ethereum).

To understand WBTC, picture the luggage storage at a train station, where you hand in your suitcase and get a claim ticket in return. You can carry that ticket anywhere in the station, give it to a friend or sell it, and the suitcase later goes to whoever holds the ticket. WBTC works the same way: you, in effect, hand over bitcoin for safekeeping and get a ticket-token that moves around the Ethereum network, and for every such token the custodian holds one real bitcoin.

As long as the custodian honestly holds the bitcoins, WBTC is worth almost exactly as much as bitcoin itself. What a token is in general is covered in what is a token.

How the WBTC token works

How an ordinary person gets WBTC and swaps it back for bitcoin

• Only approved companies can issue and redeem WBTC directly.
• In practice, WBTC is bought and sold on exchanges. Say you want to borrow a stablecoin (a digital dollar on a blockchain) against your bitcoin on the Ethereum network: you swap your bitcoin for WBTC and later swap it back. Each such swap costs a little money, made up of a fee and a small difference in price. How a swap without a middleman works, on a decentralized exchange, is explained in the Uniswap profile.
• Don't mix up the networks: WBTC lives mainly on Ethereum, although it is also officially issued on a few others². There is no WBTC on the Bitcoin network itself. How networks and token formats differ is covered in token standards.

How WBTC is issued and redeemed

1. An approved company hands bitcoins in to the custodian, like a suitcase going into storage.
2. The custodian confirms receipt, and the company gets its ticket: exactly as many WBTC are issued on the Ethereum network as bitcoins were handed in.
3. From then on, WBTC can be transferred, sold and put up as collateral in apps, and each transfer costs a fee on the network where the WBTC sits, for example Ethereum (what is gas).
4. When the company returns the WBTC, those tokens are destroyed and the custodian releases the bitcoins.

According to the project, there are exactly as many WBTC in circulation as there are bitcoins with the custodian, and you can check this, because the addresses holding the bitcoins are published on the project's site

⁴ (what are reserves).

Where WBTC is used today

• To borrow against bitcoin without selling it, a person deposits WBTC as collateral in a lending service and borrows a stablecoin, so the bitcoin in effect stays with them, although a sharp price drop can lead to the collateral being sold.
• On decentralized exchanges, WBTC is swapped in pairs with other cryptocurrency.
• Some large lending services stopped accepting WBTC as collateral in 2024, and some started accepting it again in 2026⁵⁶. The Coinbase exchange delisted WBTC in December 2024⁷.

Why a change of custodian matters to a WBTC holder

Between 2024 and 2026 WBTC's custodian changed, and nobody asked the holders. The bitcoins are now held by the company BiT Global⁸¹, and some services dropped WBTC afterwards. It can happen again: other services are free to stop accepting your ticket, while bitcoin itself has no such dependency.

How WBTC differs from bitcoin and cbBTC

	BTC	WBTC	cbBTC
Works in Ethereum apps?	no	yes	yes
Do you have to trust a custodian company?	no	yes	yes
Does one company hold the bitcoins?	no	yes2	yes
Is the fee paid on the Bitcoin network?	yes	no	no
Can its price drift from bitcoin's?	no	varies1	varies1
Can you lose it by losing the key?	yes	yes	yes

1. If the custodian runs into trouble or services stop accepting the token. ↩
2. Since 2026 there has been one custodian, BiT Global. WBTC is exploring a move to several custodians.⁹ ↩

Pros and cons of BTC, WBTC and cbBTC

If you'd rather trust no one, there is always bitcoin itself, on the Bitcoin network (Bitcoin).

WBTC token risks

• If the custodian turns out not to have the bitcoins, WBTC loses its value, because it becomes a ticket with no suitcase behind it.
• An exchange or a lending service can stop accepting WBTC, as happened in 2024.
• WBTC is issued by a smart contract, and a bug in it would hit every holder at once (smart contract).
• WBTC follows bitcoin's price both up and down, so if you borrowed against it, a price drop can end with your collateral being sold.

Where to check current data

Look up the bitcoin reserve addresses, the list of networks and news about custodians on the WBTC website.

Look up the current price and trading volume on a crypto data aggregator.

More detail on custodians, networks and the lawsuit

Besides Ethereum, WBTC is officially issued on Solana, Tron, BNB Chain, Base, Kava and Osmosis^2101112.

How the custodians changed and who dropped WBTC:

1. In August 2024 the custodian BitGo announced that it would hold the bitcoins together with the company BiT Global, across several countries. BitGo itself described the deal as a strategic partnership with Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, and the Tron ecosystem ⚖️, which worried part of the community⁸.
2. In September 2024 the BA Labs team proposed that Sky governance (formerly MakerDAO) phase WBTC out of its collateral, and votes on the phases began on 16 September¹³¹⁴. Around the same time Coinbase launched its own alternative, cbBTC¹⁵.
3. On 19 November 2024 Coinbase announced it would delist WBTC. BiT Global filed a lawsuit on 13 December ⚖️, the court did not stop the delisting, and WBTC left Coinbase on 19 December⁷.
4. In June 2025 the parties agreed to end the case, and the same lawsuit can no longer be filed again ⚖️¹⁶.
5. In March 2026 WBTC announced that control of custody was passing to BiT Global. Access to the bitcoins is split between companies, and BitGo keeps one of the three keys needed for a transfer; the transition was planned to be completed on 1 May 2026¹.
6. In October 2026 WBTC said it was exploring how to spread its reserves across several custodians⁹.
7. On 31 March 2026 Spark, a lending service from the Sky ecosystem, started accepting WBTC as collateral again⁵.

Frequently asked questions