Coinbase’s country director for Singapore, Hassan Ahmed, recently announced plans to bring Coinbase’s new “cbBTC” — a wrapped Bitcoin asset — to the Solana (SOL) network at the Breakpoint 2024 event.
No date was specified for the launch of the Bitcoin (BTC) token during the announcement. Ahmed told the audience:
“We recently launched cbBTC on base, but our users love Solana, and so do we. So we are very excited to announce that we will be bringing native cbBTC to Solana as well.”
The Coinbase executive’s announcement drew immediate applause from the Solana-centered conference — indicating an appetite for the collateralized asset.
Coinbase launches cbBTC
Coinbase announced the launch of cbBTC on Sept. 12 for customers in Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and all states within the United States except New York.
The wrapped Bitcoin asset was originally launched on the Ethereum (ETH) and Base networks. Coinbase explained that cbBTC is backed at a 1:1 ratio, with Bitcoin held by the centralized exchange, and there are no separate order books or trading pairs for cbBTC on the Coinbase platform.
According to CryptoQuant, cbBTC has surged to become the third most popular wrapped Bitcoin product on the market. Coinbase’s cbBTC achieved this in only seven days — beating out competitors like Huobi BTC (HBTC) and renBTC (RENBTC)— which have been around since 2020.
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Sky community pitches cbBTC as alternative to WBTC
In the short time cbBTC has been around, the digital asset has managed to attract the attention of notable players in the crypto space.
On Sept. 12, the team for the Sky lending and borrowing platform — formerly known as Maker — announced they were seeking to remove Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) as a collateral asset from the platform due to perceived concerns that Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun was involved with the project.
The Sky community pitched several alternatives to WBTC — including Coinbase’s cbBTC — as forms of collateralized Bitcoin, and on Sept. 19, the Sky community overwhelmingly voted to remove WBTC from the ecosystem, with over 88% of respondents voting to eliminate WBTC from the platform.
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