Tokenized BTC sits in an awkward position in 2026. The total supply of wrapped, custodial, and threshold-secured BTC across every major variant clears roughly $15 to $20 billion, but Bitcoin's own market cap hovers near $1.58 trillion at an $78,882 spot price. That means under 2 percent of BTC is actually onchain in a form that can touch lending, market making, or settlement rails. Circle's cirBTC announcement aims squarely at that gap.
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This article maps the current tokenized BTC supply by issuer, traces the growth trajectory, and frames why the launch of cirBTC, Aave V4's BTC strategy, and the broader BTCfi push could pull a much larger share of BTC onchain over the next 18 months.
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Across the eight largest wrapped, custodial, and threshold-secured BTC tokens, total tokenized BTC supply sits in the $15B to $20B range as of Q2 2026. WBTC remains the largest at roughly $9.1B TVL per DeFiLlama, followed by FBTC and cbBTC. The combined supply represents under 2 percent of BTC's market cap.
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The headline ratio matters more than any single token. BTC's total market cap of $1,577.6B against a tokenized supply near $17B means more than 98 percent of all Bitcoin still sits on Bitcoin Layer 1 wallets, exchange omnibus accounts, or cold storage. The onchain share has grown since 2022 but has not yet broken past the 2 percent ceiling that wBTC alone briefly approached.
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Here is the wrapped BTC market broken down by the eight variants that matter for institutional and DeFi flows. Supplies are approximate Q2 2026 figures from DeFiLlama, project dashboards, and issuer disclosures. cirBTC is included as zero-supply pre-launch since Circle has only opened a waitlist.

The table makes two things obvious. First, WBTC still anchors the category but no longer dominates the way it did in 2022. Second, the institutional tier (cbBTC, FBTC, and soon cirBTC) is where net new supply has come from since late 2024.
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WBTC's relative share has slipped because of two things: the BiT Global custody controversy in late 2024 that prompted MakerDAO (now Sky) and others to reduce WBTC collateral exposure, and the arrival of cbBTC as a Coinbase-issued alternative with cleaner US institutional optics. WBTC remains the deepest-liquidity wrapped BTC, but its growth has flattened.
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BitGo responded with a multi-custodian model that added BiT Global alongside the original custody arrangement. That stabilized the token but did not reverse the migration of DeFi collateral toward cbBTC and FBTC for new mints. Most existing WBTC liquidity sits in Curve and Uniswap pools that are sticky for arbitrage reasons rather than ideological loyalty to BitGo.
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cbBTC launched September 2024 as Coinbase's 1:1 wrapped BTC backed by Coinbase Custody reserves. By Q2 2026 it has grown to roughly $2.5B in supply, making it the second or third largest wrapped BTC depending on the week. cbBTC adoption was accelerated by Base ecosystem incentives and direct Coinbase exchange listings.
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The cbBTC growth curve is the cleanest precedent for what cirBTC's launch trajectory could look like. A US-regulated issuer with deep exchange and custody infrastructure, launched into a market hungry for non-WBTC options, reached billions in supply inside 18 months without aggressive yield incentives.
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FBTC, issued by Antalpha Prime with Mantle, sits near $1.5B in supply. It found product-market fit on Mantle and Ethereum lending markets, particularly via Morpho Blue vaults. tBTC, the Threshold Network's threshold-cryptography wrapped BTC, holds around $500M and serves the segment that prioritizes minimal custodian trust over institutional optics.
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Lombard's LBTC and Ether.fi's eBTC are the BTCfi-native cohort, leaning on Babylon's staked BTC architecture rather than custodial reserves. Their supply trajectories are driven by Bitcoin restaking yield, not by lending collateral demand. Treating them as the same category as WBTC misses the mechanic.
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Three catalysts point to faster tokenized BTC growth through 2027: Circle's cirBTC launch (waitlist open, Ethereum and Arc), Aave V4's published BTC strategy that increases wrapped BTC collateral parameters, and RWA stablecoin growth pulling additional Bitcoin onchain as treasury managers diversify into onchain BTC alongside BUIDL and USYC.
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The base case is that tokenized BTC supply roughly doubles by mid-2027, reaching the $30B to $40B range. That still leaves the onchain share under 3 percent of BTC's market cap, but the pace would mark the first time growth has come from institutional and treasury demand rather than DeFi farming incentives. A bull case where cirBTC and competing institutional wrappers compound at cbBTC's launch pace puts the number meaningfully higher.
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Stablecoin supply sits at $319.7B in 2026 and tokenized treasuries (BUIDL at $2.8B, USYC at $2.6B, USDY at $2.1B, OUSG) clear roughly $10B combined. Tokenized BTC at ~$17B is larger than tokenized treasuries but a fraction of stablecoins. The comparison matters because the same institutional buyers driving BUIDL and USYC growth are the natural buyers for cirBTC.
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Stablecoin penetration of the dollar money supply is also a useful frame. USDC, USDT, and USDS together represent a meaningful share of offshore dollar flows. Tokenized BTC has nowhere near that penetration of BTC's market cap, which is the entire growth thesis.
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cirBTC will be Circle's 1:1 native BTC-backed wrapped Bitcoin, launching first on Ethereum and Arc (Circle's L1), with reserves verifiable onchain. Circle has not announced a public launch date and frames cirBTC as subject to regulatory approvals. The waitlist is open at circle.com/cirbtc as of this writing.
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The strategic read is that Circle is bundling cirBTC into the same institutional surface as USDC, EURC, and Circle Mint. Treasuries that already mint USDC at par through Circle Mint can plausibly mint cirBTC through the same workflow. That is a structural advantage neither BitGo nor Coinbase has, and it is likely to pull a meaningful share of new institutional wrapped BTC mints toward Circle once cirBTC goes live.
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The biggest risks are regulatory rather than technical. Wrapped BTC has avoided direct US securities scrutiny so far, but any classification of wrapped BTC as a security or a regulated commodity derivative would slow institutional issuance. Custody concentration is a second risk: WBTC's 2024 episode showed how quickly DeFi collateral can rotate when custodian trust shifts.
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A third risk is BTCfi competition. If Babylon-secured staked BTC variants like LBTC and eBTC compound faster than custodial wrappers, the share captured by cirBTC, cbBTC, and FBTC could be smaller than the cbBTC precedent implies.
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Supply figures pulled from DeFiLlama's tokenized BTC dashboard and BTCfi category page. BTC market cap and price from CoinGecko ($78,882 spot, $1,577.6B cap as of the live data snapshot). cirBTC product details sourced from circle.com/cirbtc. cbBTC launch details from Coinbase's September 2024 announcement. FBTC mechanics from Antalpha Prime and Mantle documentation. tBTC from Threshold Network docs. WBTC custody history from BitGo's 2024 multi-custodian announcement and Sky governance forum discussions. rwa.xyz used as a cross-reference for institutional tokenization comparisons.
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All percentages are rounded. Where exact supply numbers are not in our live data snapshot, we use ranges rather than fabricated point estimates.
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