Stablecoin issuer Circle plans to introduce its own wrapped Bitcoin, cirBTC, marking a direct challenge to incumbents such as Coinbase and BitGo as it pursues institutional customers.
Announced on Thursday, cirBTC will launch on Ethereum and be backed 1:1 by bitcoin (BTC). Circle said the token is aimed at over‑the‑counter desks, market makers and lending protocols and is intended to offer institutions a “highly secure and neutral version of wrapped BTC.” Circle also plans to make cirBTC available on its layer‑1 blockchain Arc and via its Circle Mint platform. Cointelegraph contacted Circle for further details but did not receive an immediate response.
Circle’s move places it into a market currently dominated by BitGo’s Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC). Coinbase launched cbBTC in September 2024; that token has a market capitalization of about $5.9 billion and a supply near 88,800 tokens. BitGo’s wBTC remains the largest wrapped‑BTC product, with roughly $8 billion in market capitalization and about 119,157 tokens outstanding, although that circulating supply is roughly half of its November 2021 peak during Bitcoin’s previous cycle high.
A number of exchanges have also issued wrapped‑BTC variants, including Kraken (KBTC), Gate (GTBTC), Binance (BBTC), Huobi (HBTC) and OKX (XBTC), though their market capitalizations are much smaller than the two leaders. Combined supply of wBTC and cbBTC is about 208,000 BTC, according to CoinGecko.
Financial institutions, which have become notable buyers of Bitcoin, have been increasingly exploring decentralized finance. Wrapped versions of BTC enable use of the asset on other chains such as Ethereum, opening access to DeFi protocols and services.
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