Coinbase to Add Proof of Reserves to Bitcoin Wrapper cbBTC

To abolish concerns about its transparency, Coinbase plans to add verifiable proof of reserves to its new Bitcoin Wrapper cbBTC. The Coinbase team confirmed the news on Monday, with the PoR allowing cbBTC to rival other Bitcoin wrappers such as Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and 21.co Wrapped Bitcoin (21BTC). The exchange has been working on the verifiable PoR for some time, and it is now one step closer to becoming a reality.

“With cbBTC, we’ve planned PoR since the early days and the team is hard at work building it,” Lukas Staniszewski, a product manager at Coinbase, said in a Sept. 23 post on the X platform. Upon the launch of their wrapped Bitcoin product on September 12, Coinbase was criticized for its lack of transparency. This lack of transparency made experts believe it would fall behind rivals WBTC and 21BTC. Furthermore, the exchange was accused of issuing “paper Bitcoin” to BlackRock this month as well.

In addition, Tron founder Justin Sun referred to the launch as “Central Bank BTC” in a post to X. He noted that cbBTC integration could “pose major security risks to decentralized finance.” Yet, that didn’t derail the massive success that the wrapped Bitcoin has proven to be thus far.

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Indeed, Coinbase’s cbBTC was still a huge success in its opening days of launch. Coinbase’s wrapped Bitcoin offering reached a market cap of $100 million in just 24 hours. Additionally, Coinbase announced that it is bringing a wrapped Bitcoin offering (cbBTC) to the Solana network.

Coinbase hasn’t provided a timeline on when PoR will arrive for its Bitcoin wrapper. However, the announcement of continued development is a positive sign. “Greater transparency with proof of reserves has been part of our roadmap since the conception of cbBTC and will follow,” Coinbase said in a release last week.