Bitcoin News: Circle has launched cirBTC, a 1:1 BTC-backed ERC-20 token now live on Ethereum mainnet, positioning it directly against WBTC’s roughly $9 billion market and approximately 85% market share with a feature its competitors do not offer: real-time on-chain reserve verification with no reliance on third-party attestations.
The product went live June 8, 2026, and is built exclusively for institutional participants, OTC desks, market makers, lenders, and DeFi protocols deploying Bitcoin as collateral inside Ethereum-based smart contract ecosystems.
The competitive target is explicit. BitGo’s Wrapped Bitcoin has dominated tokenized BTC since its January 2019 launch, and Coinbase’s cbBTC has emerged as the primary institutional challenger since September 2024, reaching approximately $5.9 billion in market value.
Circle is entering that race with a specific transparency argument and the institutional trust built over years of USDC issuance.
Bitcoin (BTC)24h7d30d1yAll time
Bitcoin News: cirBTC’s Reserve Verification Model, What Real-Time On-Chain Proof Actually Means
The core technical differentiator is Chainlink Proof of Reserve. Each cirBTC token issued as an ERC-20 on Ethereum is backed by native Bitcoin held in segregated regulated custody, and counterparties can verify that backing in real time through multiple wallet addresses visible directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, no waiting for monthly audits, no relying on custodian claims, no off-chain attestation lag.
This is structurally different from the WBTC model, where BitGo operates as the sole custodian and publishes wallet addresses for manual verification, but reserve confirmation still depends on BitGo’s centralized control and governance multisig for contract changes.
The RenBTC wind-down and broader criticism of custodial bridge opacity established the trust gap Circle is explicitly targeting. Chainlink’s automated feed closes the verification loop at the contract level rather than at the audit cycle.
Bitcoin assets are kept separate from Circle’s corporate holdings, and minting and redemption run through Circle Mint, its institutional liquidity management platform.
The same infrastructure that powers USDC settlement rails is now extended to wrapped Bitcoin collateral, allowing firms to hold native BTC in custody while cirBTC moves through on-chain financial applications without ever selling the underlying position.
Discover: The Best Crypto to Diversify Your Portfolio
The $15–20B Tokenized BTC Market: Where cirBTC Fits Against WBTC and cbBTC
The total tokenized Bitcoin supply across all wrapped products sits at approximately $15–20 billion in Q2 2026, still under 2% of Bitcoin’s roughly $1.7 trillion market capitalization.
