#KyberDeFi Partner Spotlight — WBTC (Wrapped BTC)

Build with WBTC and Kyber! 1 team wins $2500 in WBTC, from a $42,000 hackathon prize pool!

Today we’d like to share about WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) and what you can build with it for our #KyberDeFi Virtual Hackathon!

For the winning project with the best use case of WBTC, BitGo is offering a bounty prize of $2500 in WBTC tokens! BitGo is a digital assets custody solution for institutional clients, and we’re glad to have Benedict Chan, CTO of BitGo, as one of our hackathon judges.

WBTC Bounty — $2500 in WBTC tokens

WBTC — Best Use Case: $2,500 in WBTC, sponsored by BitGo

What is WBTC?

Wrapped Bitcoin is the first ERC20 token backed 1:1 with Bitcoin. WBTC will allow Ethereum to be leveraged to enable new dApps and use cases for Bitcoin. Completely transparent, 100% verifiable, community-led.

Why is WBTC needed?

WBTC brings greater liquidity to the Ethereum ecosystem including decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and financial applications. Today, the majority of trading volume takes place on centralized exchanges with Bitcoin. WBTC changes that, bringing Bitcoin’s liquidity to DEXs and making it possible to use Bitcoin for token trades.

WBTC standardizes Bitcoin to the ERC20 format, creating smart contracts for Bitcoin. This makes it easier to write smart contracts that integrate Bitcoin transfers. WBTC is an integral part of DeFi (decentralized finance) today as it brings Bitcoin liquidity to Ethereum.

Maintaining various nodes and managing transaction types in order to support multiple currencies can be onerous. Now exchanges, wallets, and payment apps only need to handle an Ethereum node.

To date, there are over 1000 addresses holding WBTC and over 45,000 transfers of the token.

WBTC can be bought on KyberSwap.com among other options.

Read the WBTC launch and the latest WBTC update.

Proof of Assets

The most important consideration of the WBTC initiative is transparency. The proof of reserve is on-chain, which shows the exact 1:1 between minted WBTC tokens and Bitcoin stored by the custodians. The current custodian is BitGo, a digital assets custody solution for institutional clients. When WBTC token holders redeem their tokens for Bitcoin, the tokens are burned. The minting and burning of tokens are in turn tracked and verifiable on the blockchain.

WBTC News

Read this defiprime.com interview with Ben, CTO of BitGo, about the origins of WBTC

WBTC is featured on defipulse

Compound Finance added WBTC

What can you build with WBTC? Hackathon Ideas

A cross-chain atomic swap service from bitcoin to wbtc and vice versa

A lightning submarine swap service from bitcoin to WBTC(ERC20)

A market making bot to buy and sell WBTC/ETH, WBTC/DAI

WBTC Technical Resources

WBTC Social Media

WBTC: Transparent, Open, and Community-Led

WBTC is an ecosystem-wide initiative where many major projects work together to bring Bitcoin liquidity to Ethereum. At the heart of this initiative is transparency, openness, and how it’s community-driven, setting an open standard for the community to work together on a single cross-chain asset standard with no single owner.

Join the WBTC Community