
Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) Is Now Live on Ethereum - tmlee
https://blog.kyber.network/wbtc-is-now-live-on-ethereum-4b4e2d1ef76f
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askmike
The article talks about Dapps and decentralized finance, but WBTC is
centralized and managed by a custodians.

Sure you could use it in your smart contract, but it has the same kind of
risks as using Tether. I think it can be dangerous to build layers of
decentralized apps on top of something that's not.

(Or maybe I'm not understanding it correctly)

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AgentME
It's technically possible to implement this in a trustless decentralized way:
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Atomic_swap](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Atomic_swap).
I can't tell if this does it that way or in a centralized way though.

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dangero
Atomic swaps don't make WBTC feasible in a trustless decentralized fashion.
The swap itself is only a very small part of the problem. The article states
they are using custodians to hold Bitcoins.

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askmike
You can lock bitcoin up inside the BTC mainchain by using certain OP codes.
This allows you to create a sidechain.

For example Liquid does this:
[https://blockstream.com/liquid/](https://blockstream.com/liquid/)

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dangero
Liquid holds btc using multisig not just OP codes.

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JohnJamesRambo
I don’t understand why anyone would use this instead of the real BTC or ETH.

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crystaln
Because they can hold BTC for the purpose of using ethereum apps instead of
selling BTC.

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josu
You don't actually hold BTC though, Bitgo does. It's more like a deposit
certificate, if Bitgo were to lose the BTCs, all WBTCs would become worthless.

I much rather RSK's approach: bring easily programmable smart contracts to
Bitcoin. Rather than bringing Bitcoin to smart contracts.

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kuhhk
It’s difficult to keep up with this space...lots of innovation! But what’s the
adoption rate of these new tools? Dozens of users a week? Hundreds? I would
find it hard to believe thousands of people will use WBTC anytime soon.

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knocte
See comment by @askmike, this is not innovation, this is bullshit. And maybe
even deceptive because they took the name "WBTC" to mimic "WETH", however, the
latter is truly decentralized and trustless, while the former is not.

