• Hedera Foundation, in partnership with BitGo and LayerZero, is launching WBTC to open new avenues for decentralized finance.
• WBTC has made it possible for BTC holders to engage in DeFi without selling their coins since 2019, with its market cap reaching $13 billion.

The Hedera Foundation has confirmed the launch of WBTC on its network, enabling Bitcoin investors to explore DeFi opportunities without selling their BTC.

This is meant to open a new frontier for Bitcoin (BTC) liquidity and allow it to be deployed into decentralized finance scenarios beyond its traditional “hold and wait” model.

The integration of Wrapped Bitcoin on Hedera was made possible through a collaboration with Hedera Council member BitGo, a leading digital asset security and custody provider known for offering institutional-grade solutions. BitGo provides secure storage, multi-signature wallets, and compliance-ready infrastructure.

The project also involved BiTGlobalTrust, a custodian and digital asset service provider specializing in bridging traditional finance standards with blockchain technology, and LayerZero, a protocol designed for secure and efficient cross-chain communication that enables assets to move safely between blockchains.

LayerZero’s technology allows WBTC to bridge seamlessly into Hedera from other networks.

Following the integration of WBTC, initial liquidity pools have officially launched on SaucerSwap, one of the leading decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in the Hedera network. James Hodgkins, Chief Growth Officer at HBAR, Inc., a subsidiary of Hedera Foundation SEZC, explained:

With the arrival of canonical WBTC on Hedera, available via Stargate Finance, the vast amount of idle Bitcoin liquidity can now participate in Hedera DeFi. Thanks to the institutional-grade benefits of Hedera, BTC holders can participate in BTCFi without the fear of frontrunning or MEV, in turn enabling a best-in-class experience for these large capital allocators.

This milestone is an attestation to Hedera’s DeFi evolution – and that the world’s most trusted Bitcoin standard recognizes the strength and growth potential of the network,

Hedera’s Advantages for WBTC Deployment

The Hedera thread highlights WBTC’s industry-leading position: with over 126,000 BTC in custody, a $13 billion market cap, and 65% market share of tokenized Bitcoin on Ethereum (ETH), WBTC has become the benchmark for Bitcoin utility across digital assets.

On Hedera, each WBTC will be fully backed 1:1 by Bitcoin held in BiTGlobalTrust’s secure custody. This reflects strong confidence in Hedera’s enterprise-grade distributed ledger technology (DLT).

The Hedera network offers unique advantages for WBTC deployment, including low, fixed, USD-denominated transaction fees, near-instant settlement thanks to the Hashgraph Consensus algorithm, and asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) for security and reliability.

Transactions achieve finality in 3–5 seconds, making trading, lending, and liquidity provisioning highly efficient.

By bringing WBTC to Hedera, the network also adopts the BitGo standard for tokenization and custody, providing a framework that ensures security, transparency, and trust for institutional and retail users alike.

HBAR has dropped 10.5% over the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.1604. If HBAR continues to slide beneath the $0.162 support, its price could move toward $0.150. Conversely, if it reclaims the $0.162 level, a recovery toward $0.170 may be possible.

HBAR’s short-term price struggles are counterbalanced by institutional buying, with the Canary HBAR ETF having acquired $68 million in only six trading sessions.