WBTC completes its transition to a multi-jurisdictional custody model

Wrapped Bitcoin has completed the transition to a new custody setup that distributes control of the assets between the United States, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) has moved from a US-based custodial model to one covering three different countries. The new setup includes the same multi-signature technology, but control will be shared between the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The change was completed on October 8 after a 60-day transition period, but rotating WBTC’s bitcoin into another multi-signature wallet briefly led to reporting errors on DeFiLlama, making it appear as if WBTC had lost 99 % of its total. Value locked (TVL).

“The cleaning is done and all the data has been updated. » said the WBTC team on

WBTC is a tokenized version of Bitcoin that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It is an ERC-20 token backed 1:1 with Bitcoin. WBTC transactions settle faster than native Bitcoin transactions, and the token is often used as collateral for participating in the world of decentralized finance (DeFi).

At the time of writing, WBTC had a circulating supply of 150,544 tokens and a market cap of $9.1 billion.

BitGo was the sole custodian of WBTC’s bitcoin until recently, when the entity announced an agreement to transfer custody to a joint venture between BitGo and BiT Global.

BiT Global’s association with Tron founder Justin Sun – a somewhat controversial figure in the crypto space – has prompted risk managers at DeFi giant Sky to to propose withdraw the WBTC as collateral.

“Overall, we believe that Sun’s involvement as a majority stake in the new WBTC joint venture presents an unacceptable level of risk,” said BA Labs, Sky’s risk management unit.

However, BA Labs recently reconsidered his stance on the situation after discussions with BitGo CEO Mike Belshe.

Meanwhile, the amount of WBTC supplied to DeFi lending protocol Aave has increased since BitGo’s announcement. Data from @jacobrizzutoDune’s dashboard shows that WBTC on Aave V3 on Ethereum reached a new all-time high of 37,000 in September.