Ethereum is more and more acting like bitcoin’s actual second layer with close to 2% of bitcoin’s current total supply (19 million) now running on eth.
Data from BtcOnEthereum, a tokenized bitcoin on eth analysis platform, shows that there are a total of 335,501 tokenized bitcoins on the ethereum blockchain as pictured above.
A break-down shows that Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) constitutes the bulk of bitcoin tokens on ethereum. There are 273,481 wBTC tokens at a market capitalization of close to $12 billion.
wBTC is followed by Huobi BTC with 39,884 HBTC tokens on the ethereum network. This BTC-pegged token has a market cap of nearly $2 billion.
RenBTC, which claims to peg bitcoin in a decentralized way, has a supply of 14,756 BTC, worth $600 million.
Other bitcoin on eth tokens featured on the website are Synthetic Bitcoin (sBTC) with 4,055 tokens. Its market capitalization is $174,145,632.
Tokenized BTC (imBTC) has a supply of 1,214 imBTC, while Token BTC (tBTC), another BTC on ETH token, has a supply of 835 bitcoin-pegged tokens on the ethereum blockchain.
Ptoken BTC (pBTC) contributes 635 BTC tokens on the ethereum blockchain. This has a market cap of $27,255,459.
There are 618 oBTC tokens on ethereum at a market cap of $26,543,098, while vBTC supplies just 23 BTC-backed tokens on the ethereum network.
All of these, especially the bigger ones like wBTC, can access the entire decentralized finance (defi) space running on eth.
They can be used as collateral to take out potentially tax-free loans, while paying eth holders in burned transactions.
Most of them are custodian tokenized bitcoin, where a trusted entity gives say wBTC for actual deposited bitcoin, with that trusted entity in this case being a defi consortium.
Some however try to manage this same transformation in a decentralized way, like renBTC. While others, such as sBTC, do not have actual bitcoin at all, they just track the price through collaterals that can also include tokenized bitcoin.
This entire variety has grown in just about three years, with wBTC launched in 2019, the rest following.
Even in this small corner thus we’ve seen significant innovation in a very short time as bitcoin and ethereum kind of merge, at least to an extent. Creating a complementary relationship to each other’s benefit in a synergy of sorts.
