Nearly $60 Million in Bitcoin Moved to Ethereum in June

According to Dune Analytics, nearly $60 million worth of Bitcoin was moved to Ethereum in June . WBTC , the oldest tokenized Bitcoin protocol on Ethereum, accounted for about 75% of this growth last month, with more than 4,800 WBTC moving to Ethereum.
As Ethereum continues to be the most popular off-chain destination for Bitcoin, demand for using Bitcoin in various decentralized financial services has increased. More specifically, yield farming and MakerDAO’s addition of tokenized Bitcoin as collateral could be strong catalysts, said Medio Demarco, a former assistant at Deutsche Bank and co-founder of cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital.
“The recent trends should not come as a surprise and are likely to continue,” Demarco told CoinDesk.
The growing popularity of tokenized Bitcoin is no surprise to Ben Chan, CTO of cryptocurrency payment processor BitGo. “The purpose of WBTC is to bring Bitcoin into the decentralized finance space,” Chan said, adding that the huge yield opportunities offered by WBTC in Ethereum-based applications are driving recent growth.
According to OnChainFX, as of the time of reporting, there is currently $132 million worth of Bitcoin on Ethereum, which accounts for approximately 0.08% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization.
Is the growing demand for using Bitcoin on Ethereum a positive sign for the leading cryptocurrency? Demarco said the trend has a “synergistic” effect for both blockchains.
Chan agreed, telling CoinDesk that for ethereum, the growth in the value of assets in decentralized finance applications is a step toward the maturity of trustless and transparent financial services. For bitcoin, the benefit is the ability to earn yield and stake bitcoin, which increases users’ incentive to invest in bitcoin, Chan said.
Chan said that using Bitcoin on Ethereum could be beneficial to both networks.