One of the world’s most popular crypto-exchanges, Binance today announced the introduction of BTokens – Binance’s offering of Wrapped tokens on Ethereum. With BTokens, users can convert existing crypto-assets onto Ethereum, while also exploring a new ecosystem of decentralized apps and projects.
This is a significant development, especially since this is evidence of the fact that Binance has sensed the popularity of such asset classes in the DeFi ecosystem. In fact, WBTC itself has $1.8 billion on ETH so far, a figure that is massive for such a nascent ecosystem. The development in question was initiated by way of an existing Binance project, with the crypto-exchange’s blog stating,
“We wanted to bring our own take on wrapped tokens with Project Token Canal.”
Project Token Canal was an initiative introduced by Binance in September, one very similar to many existing ‘wrapped coins’ in the crypto-community. It facilitated the issue and binding of more token assets on Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain, and guaranteed the conversion from and to the original tokens.
Initially, Project Token Canal supported BTC, BTC BEP2, and BTC BEP20 deposits and withdrawals, allowing users to move tokens between Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain. Right now, over 30 tokens are supported.
The introduction of BTokens expands on this vision. The first batch of BTokens includes BBTC, BDOT, BFIL, and BWRX, all of which are ERC20 versions of the underlying assets (BTC, DOT, FIL and WRX).
These tokens are also a 1:1 peg with the native assets so, these tokens maintain their value when moved from one blockchain to another and are covered by the SAFU fund.
Aimed at giving users more freedom over their crypto-assets, the interoperability between blockchains enabled by this project has been an important step towards bridging CeFi and DeFi ecosystems.
Reportedly, BTokens have gained momentum around the world after being listed on the Cream Ethereum Platform and ForTube. In fact, $350 million worth of BTokens is already on Binance Smart Chain.