In early August, a little over two months ago, BitGo announced that it was entering a new joint venture with Justin Sun and BiT Global, a Hong Kong-based custodian, to manage custody for Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).
Sun’s involvement was controversial, leading some DeFi projects to briefly consider whether WBTC would remain safe going forward. The most high-profile of these, MakerDAO, did eventually decide it was still safe to include WBTC.
This period of time even included a less than fully viable proposal for competitor Threshold Network to acquire WBTC.
Additionally, both Coinbase and Kraken have launched competitors to WBTC following BitGo’s announcement.
Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin has seen the most rapid growth among WBTC’s competitors.
Since then, Coinbase’s version, Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC), has seen the most rapid growth among the four charted competitors, vastly outstripping both Kraken Wrapped Bitcoin (kBTC) and Threshold Network Bitcoin (tBTC).
Despite the originally controversial change and an initial surge, burn requests have slowed for WBTC, and the appreciation in bitcoin’s price has allowed its market capitalization to grow more substantially than the growth of its competitors tBTC, kBTC, and cbBTC combined.
Additionally, BitGo has announced that two of the three keys will remain in its control, split between BitGo Singapore and BitGo Inc., with only a single key under the control of Sun-affiliated BiT Global.