Coinbase’s Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC) launches on Base and Ethereum

The largest crypto trading platform in the United States announced that its product Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC) has gone live on two blockchains: Base and Ethereum.

This comes months after the company integrated the Lightning network for BTC transfers.

The exchange’s announcement reported that Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC) will be “backed 1:1 by Bitcoin (BTC) held by Coinbase.”

So far, the new product is only available on Base and Ethereum, but support is expected to expand to other networks. However, the statement did not mention any names.

“With cbBTC, we continue to increase economic freedom by giving users more ways to spend their Bitcoin. Starting today, millions of Coinbase customers can seamlessly and securely access financial applications within the Ethereum ecosystem using Bitcoin they already have.” – read the announcement, highlighting Coinbase’s integration of the Lightning network earlier this year for faster and cheaper BTC transfers.

The new product promises several DeFi applications for its industry compatibility. BTC holders will be able to “take advantage of new DeFi use cases.” These include providing your BTC as liquidity to DeFi protocols or “using it as collateral to borrow other crypto assets.”

Some of the DeFi projects that will support cbBTC since its inception include Curve, Aave, Compound, Mellow, DeFinitive, Steakhouse, and Maple.

cbBTC will not have a separate order book or trading pair on Coinbase. Once users send their BTC from the exchange to the designated Base and Ethereum addresses, the funds will be automatically converted 1:1 to cbBTC and vice versa.

Customers of the exchange will be able to trade cbBTC on DEX via Coinbase Wallet and other third party trading platforms that wish to support it.

To date, cbBTC will be available to Coinbase users based in the US (apart from New York State), the UK, EEA states, Singapore, Australia and Brazil.

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