Swap cbBTC at the Best Rate

What is cbBTC?

Bitcoin's own ledger cannot run Ethereum-style contracts, so using BTC in lending markets or liquidity pools requires a token that represents it on another chain. cbBTC is Coinbase's version of that wrapper: for every token in circulation, the company states an equivalent amount of bitcoin is held in its custody, including cold storage, dedicated to backing the wrapped asset and not used for anything else.

The token launched on 12 September 2024 on Ethereum and Base, with Solana and Arbitrum following, and the EVM deployments share the same vanity address beginning with cbb7c0000. Like bitcoin itself, the ERC-20 uses eight decimals. Coinbase positioned it as an alternative to WBTC after that product's custody was restructured in 2024 to involve additional jurisdictions and partners, a change parts of the market treated as a risk.

How cbBTC works

There is no separate wrap interface for Coinbase customers: sending BTC from a Coinbase account to an address on a supported network converts it one for one into cbBTC, and depositing cbBTC back into a Coinbase account converts it into BTC again. The mint and burn happen inside that transfer flow, so the wrapper behaves like a network choice rather than a product.

Backing is published rather than merely asserted. Coinbase lists the bitcoin reserve addresses on its cbBTC proof-of-reserves page, refreshed on a near-real-time basis, so anyone can compare the wrapped supply across networks against the BTC sitting in those addresses, and a Chainlink proof-of-reserve feed mirrors the data on-chain. This is address-level transparency, not an accounting-firm attestation.

cbBTC supply and tokenomics

cbBTC has no issuance schedule, cap or allocation: supply expands when customers move BTC onto supported networks and contracts when they move it back, so the float simply mirrors how much custodied bitcoin users want in ERC-20 form. Nothing about holding it earns yield by itself, and the token's value proposition is parity with BTC rather than scarcity of the wrapper.

Who builds cbBTC

Coinbase, the US-listed exchange founded in 2012, runs the entire cbBTC stack: the custody of the backing bitcoin, the minting and burning contracts, the proof-of-reserves publication and the customer flows that wrap and unwrap. The wrapped-asset terms are part of the Coinbase user agreement, and availability is limited by region, with New York excluded at launch.

That single-operator design is the opposite of a wrapper like WETH, which has no operator at all: cbBTC's guarantees are Coinbase's institutional custody record and its regulatory posture, not contract immutability.

What people use cbBTC for

cbBTC exists so that bitcoin value can participate in contract-based finance on other networks, and the integrations lined up for its launch pointed at exactly that.

• Collateral for borrowing in lending markets such as Aave, Compound, Morpho, Spark and Moonwell.
• Liquidity provision in BTC pairs on automated market makers.
• Trading between cbBTC, WBTC and other bitcoin representations.
• Moving BTC exposure across Ethereum, Base, Solana and Arbitrum through Coinbase accounts.

cbBTC risks and considerations

cbBTC is a custodial claim. Its backing depends on Coinbase actually holding the reserve bitcoin and honoring conversions, and the token contracts are operated by the company, so balances live under its compliance controls and the terms of the Coinbase user agreement rather than under an immutable contract. The proof-of-reserves page shows addresses and balances, which is weaker assurance than an independent audit of custody arrangements.

Redemption to native BTC runs through a Coinbase account, so holders in unsupported regions can trade the token but cannot unwrap it directly. And as with every wrapped bitcoin, tokens with similar names on various chains are distinct assets; the deployment addresses Coinbase publishes are the ones its reserves back.