WBTC custodian seeks business diversification Sun Yuchen: will enhance its level of decentralization

Recently, the crypto asset custodian BitGo announced that it will create a joint venture with BiT Global to provide multi-jurisdictional custody for WBTC, aiming to diversify the custody and cold storage services of WBTC across multiple jurisdictions. The new solution will utilize the same BitGo multi-signature technology and cold storage technology that has been used to protect Bitcoin since 2019, with a transition period of 60 days, and there will be no interruption or disruption of services.

BitGo disclosed the relevant partners on its official website, including individual collaborator Justin Sun, the founder of TRON. This news has sparked widespread discussion in the crypto community. In response, Justin Sun stated that his personal involvement in WBTC is purely strategic, as he neither controls the private keys of the WBTC reserves nor can he move any BTC reserves.

He also emphasized that the goal of participating in some industry projects is to promote decentralized, secure protocols and projects, stating, "WBTC is an important part of the DeFi ecosystem, and I look forward to ensuring it continues to be so!"

WBTC (Wrapped BTC), also known as wrapped Bitcoin, is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain issued by BitGo, backed 1:1 by Bitcoin. WBTC is already one of the largest Bitcoin DeFi applications. According to the official website, WBTC has 74 partners and supports Ethereum, TRON, Base, Kava, and Osmosis.

Since its establishment in 2019, WBTC has been custodied by BitGo, which is responsible for safeguarding all underlying Bitcoin and the private keys of the smart contracts that mint WBTC tokens. BitGo, as the world's largest independent digital asset custodian, has a high reputation in the industry, with shareholders including well-known institutions like Goldman Sachs. According to media reports, Bitcoin transactions handled by BitGo once accounted for 20% of the global scale.

As a crucial component of Bitcoin in DeFi applications, WBTC is a primary channel for providing foundational liquidity to DeFi projects, mainly connecting Bitcoin users worldwide through the WBTC merchant network.

The core demand of WBTC is decentralized management and ensuring the high security of the underlying Bitcoin asset custody. After five years of successful development, WBTC peaked at over $20 billion, playing an increasingly important role as a foundational liquidity provider in the entire Web3 ecosystem. How to further enhance WBTC's international operations and platform risk management capabilities is an important strategic consideration for BitGo as the custody operation platform.

Justin Sun places great importance on the degree of decentralization of crypto projects. He believes that BitGo's pursuit of operational platform diversification can make WBTC more decentralized and internationalized, allowing the community to further become the leader and promoter of the DeFi ecosystem.

In response to some community users' discussions about the new developments that they do not fully understand, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe addressed the discussions sparked by the tweet, stating, "BiT Global, as a licensed custodian, has a complete team system for customer account management, and they are obligated to properly safeguard assets in accordance with regulatory compliance requirements."

Additionally, regarding the emergence of the "so-called proposal by MakerDao to delist WBTC," which has been proven to be false news, Mike Belshe also refuted it.