To the surprise of many, bitcoin (BTC) has been a breakout star in Ethereum’s decentralized finance (DeFi) moment. Taking the form of wrapped or tokenized bitcoin, the digital asset takes the best of both blockchains – bitcoin’s price value and brand along with Ethereum’s programmability – into one highly in-demand token.
Last week alone, the supply of BitGo’s wrapped bitcoins (WBTC) topped 76,000 after setting an all-time record of nearly 21,000 wrapped bitcoins minted within one week.
The week before held the previous record of over 12,200 tokens minted in a single week, according to Dune Analytics.
Overall, investors have made tokenized bitcoin one of the largest assets on DeFi with nearly 107,000 BTC worth some $1.1 billion minted from seven issuers, mostly lured in by high rates of return on lending when compared to other options such as BlockFi.