Coinbase has announced that it intends to delist Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), claiming that as of its “most recent review,” it no longer meets the listing requirements for the exchange. This will go into effect on December 19.

This comes after Coinbase launched its own competitor to this token, Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin (cbBTC), a token that has drawn the ire of Justin Sun, who is now involved in the custody of WBTC.

Justin Sun and WBTC

The tokenized bitcoin space has seen great upheaval since August when BitGo announced that it was forming a new joint venture with Justin Sun and BiT Global to manage the custody of WBTC.

Read more: CHART: The growth of WBTC competitors

Sun’s involvement has provoked a great deal of consternation across the industry and led Coinbase and Kraken to launch tokenized competitors. It has also prompted an ill-fated proposal from Threshold Network to acquire the token.

The launch of these competitors has also led Sun to criticize cbBTC, claiming that Coinbase’s failure to complete a proof of reserves process is evidence that the exchange is “unable to meet the requirements.” It is important to note that Sun-owned Poloniex has also never completed a proof-of-reserves process and operates a tokenized version of bitcoin on Tron that is far larger than cbBTC.

Additionally, this Poloniex bitcoin on Tron makes up over half of all bitcoin on Sun-advised HTX.

Now, Coinbase has decided that the changes to WBTC are significant enough that it no longer meets Coinbase’s standards. It’s important to highlight that many assets of dubious quality do meet Coinbase’s standards, including: 

• Dogecoin
• Shiba Inu
• Pepe
• dogwifhat

This delisting seems likely to pour more fuel on the fires of the tokenized bitcoin space, especially the ongoing beef between Sun and Coinbase.

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The post Coinbase to delist WBTC months after Justin Sun controversy appeared first on Protos.

Coinbase has decided to take advantage recent controversies surrounding WBTC’s decision to involve Justin Sun to launch its own wrapped bitcoin project, Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC).

This new token is offered on both Ethereum and Coinbase’s own Base network. Coinbase will treat it as equivalent to normal BTC in its orderbooks, and Coinbase users can obtain cbBTC by withdrawing Bitcoin on either Ethereum or Base, and it will be automatically converted. 

Coinbase’s website says that this asset can already be used across the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem, including Aerodrome, Curve, Aave, Compound, Spark, and more. 

CoinMarketCap indicates that the current marketcap for this token is approximately $100 million. 

cbBTC, WBTC, and Bitcoin-on-Tron

Read more: MakerDAO disables WBTC borrows after Justin Sun involvement revealed 

cbBTC competitor WBTC has attracted additional scrutiny since announcing that Sun and a custodian he advises, BiT Global, were getting involved with the project.

This announcement initially led some DeFi projects, including Maker, to re-consider how WBTC was treated in the protocol, centering around fears of Sun’s reliability.

Sun has already taken to X to share his disappointment with this new competitor, complaining that cbBTC “lacks Proof of Reserve, no audits, and can freeze anyone’s balance anytime. Essentially, it’s just ‘trust me.’ Any U.S. government subpoena could seize all your BTC. There’s no better representation of central bank Bitcoin than this. It’s a dark day for BTC.”

This is a somewhat ironic stance for Sun to take, considering the Bitcoin on Tron product offered by Poloniex, a cryptocurrency exchange he owns.

Sun had previously promised that Poloniex would have a ‘proof-of-reserves’ but has failed to provide that in the almost two years since that promise was made. 

Additionally, Poloniex offers its own version of wrapped bitcoin, commonly described as ‘Bitcoin-on-Tron’, which is substantially larger than WBTC on Tron. Protos has previously reached out to Poloniex to determine where the bitcoins for this product are held, and Poloniex was unwilling to disclose that information.

Despite this troubling lack of disclosure, Sun-advised HTX (formerly Huobi) holds more than half of its current bitcoin reserves in this Poloniex-offered product.

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The post Launch of cbBTC, WBTC competitor, sparks Justin Sun hypocrisy appeared first on Protos.