Wbtc Expands To Hedera As Bitcoin Liquidity Flows Into New Defi Rails

Wrapped Bitcoin's move to Hedera brings tokenized BTC and increased liquidation to the network's growing decentralized finance ecosystem.

Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), the largest tokenized version of Bitcoin, has expanded to the Hedera network — a move that could open the door to more decentralized finance (DeFi) options for BTC holders.

The integration, announced Thursday, brings additional liquidity to Hedera, which already supports smart contracts and native tokenization and markets itself as a low-fee network with no frontrunning or miner-extractable value (MEV).

Frontrunning and MEV are tactics where validators reorder transactions to profit at users’ expense — a problem Hedera’s consensus mechanism is designed to avoid.

The launch was supported by BitGo, a Hedera Council member and the primary custodian behind WBTC, alongside BiT Global and LayerZero, an interoperability provider.

WBTC gained popularity as one of the first large-scale solutions enabling Bitcoin (BTC) holders to participate in DeFi. Wrapping allows BTC to be converted into a token on another blockchain while remaining fully backed by Bitcoin held in custody.

In theory, this allows users to deploy their BTC in smart contract ecosystems for lending, trading and other protocols without forfeiting their underlying Bitcoin exposure.

Hedera has experienced an uptick in DeFi activity, marked by a significant increase in total value locked over the past 12 months. Its native token, HBAR, is the 19th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with an estimated market value of about $7 billion.

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Hedera’s move is part of a broader trend linking Bitcoin more closely to DeFi, as holders seek ways to use their assets in lending, trading and yield-generating protocols.

Source: CoinTelegraph