ckBTC

As the web3 landscape continues to expand with fresh narratives, mature financial products, and increased user adoption, most cryptocurrency markets remain siled within their local networks, resulting in siled environments that limit data and Free flow of value from one blockchain to another.
Exchange Bitcoin and Ethereum
ETH/BTC is the leading non-stablecoin trading pair with over $105 million in daily trading volume. Swapping Bitcoin for Ethereum also opens up a range of different possibilities, being able to leverage Bitcoin’s market and its community in the DeFi space. , inspiring further innovation.

Native Bitcoin integration on ICP has enabled developers around the world to unlock new possibilities, from using Ordinals as collateral to allowing Satoshis to be sent via chat messages - BTC @> ICP integration has helped activate the Bitcoin economy.
This blog post collects insights from the special edition of Chugga Chugga Bitcoin and explores how 11 different dapps built on this native integration are powering the Bitcoin economy, but first, let’s look at how ICP’s vision for Bitcoin integration is coming to fruition.
How Bitcoin Integration Will Work in 2022
In line with the ethos of decentralization, the Internet Computer (ICP) lays the technical foundation for hosting software and systems that interact with the Internet in a fully decentralized manner.

In the cryptocurrency realm, Bitcoin has always held the king's position as "digital gold," but its native functionality has long been limited in decentralized finance (DeFi). The Internet Computer (ICP), through innovative protocol-level integration, has introduced chain-key Bitcoin (ckBTC), breaking this constraint in a revolutionary way and redefining Bitcoin's possibilities in the Web3 era.

1. Technological breakthroughs of native integration.
The birth of ckBTC originates from the deep integration of the Internet Computer and the Bitcoin network at the protocol layer. Through chain-key ECDSA signature technology, ICP nodes can generate Bitcoin addresses and sign transactions in a decentralized manner, without exposing the complete private key. This threshold signature scheme disperses key fragments across thousands of nodes, ensuring the system remains secure even if some nodes are compromised.

As the dominant crypto asset with a market share exceeding 50%, Bitcoin's application in decentralized finance (DeFi) has always faced 'functionality shortcomings': its simple UTXO model is difficult to support complex smart contracts, while traditional cross-chain solutions rely on high-risk bridging protocols, resulting in Bitcoin accounting for only 0.1% of the locked value in DeFi. This contradiction peaked in 2022 — over $1.89 billion was lost throughout the year due to cross-chain bridge vulnerabilities, and the collapse of centralized institutions like FTX further exposed the fatal flaws of traditional solutions. The birth of ckBTC, through protocol-level integration of the Internet Computer (ICP) with the Bitcoin network, realizes Bitcoin programmability without trust and bridging for the first time, initiating a revolutionary on-chain transformation of Bitcoin's native assets.

In the context of the continuous evolution of digital currencies and decentralized finance (DeFi), Bitcoin, as the most influential crypto asset globally, has potential far beyond 'digital gold.' Traditionally, Bitcoin's application in the DeFi field has been limited by its simple design and functionality, often relying on centralized intermediaries to achieve smart contract interactions, making it difficult to fully leverage the advantages of decentralization. Now, with the native Bitcoin integration technology of the Internet Computer (#icp ), ckBTC is breaking this limitation in a new way, opening a new chapter in the Bitcoin financial ecosystem.

In the crypto world where Bitcoin's market cap exceeds one trillion USD, its underlying network still faces the core contradiction of DeFi ecological construction — the fundamental conflict between its value storage property as digital gold and the lack of programmability. Chain Key Bitcoin (ckBTC), launched through protocol-level innovation on the Internet Computer blockchain, is redefining Bitcoin's financial infrastructure with a trustless cross-chain mechanism.

1. Native Integration: A Technological Revolution to Break the Cross-chain Dilemma
The fundamental issue that traditional cross-chain bridges have caused over 2 billion USD in losses in the past three years stems from centralized custody and vulnerabilities in smart contracts. ckBTC achieves breakthroughs through two major technological innovations:

As mentioned in the last long tweet, the great development of "Inscription" has promoted the prosperity of the BTC ecosystem, but it has also enhanced competition for BTC network resources, high costs, and the foreseeable rise of BTC in the future, which has been increasing. The determination of BTC ecosystem players to enter.
This prompted people to start discussing BTC's expansion plan, which also attracted the attention of the community and investors.
Of course, people have very tacitly noticed the expansion plan of directly upgrading BTC L1. The most radical discussions are nothing more than lifting the seals of some OP scripts and continuing to tap the remaining potential of BTC under Taproot (such as discussions on CTV and CAT). In terms of the development and theoretical results of ETH rollup and upgrade, BTC Layer2 has become the mainstream of expansion discussions and the fastest effective solution. The National Project will also be launched in the next two or three months and will become the absolute mainstream narrative of hype.

Like the internet before it, the blockchain industry seeks to usher in a new era and economy, known as Web3, where decentralization reigns supreme and users run the internet.
The Internet Computing (ICP) is helping pave the way by providing users with blockchain resources to build their Web3 applications and systems, and we spoke with Jan Camenisch, CTO and cryptographer at the DFINITY Foundation, to discuss how the Internet Computing Leveraging smart contracts to power its decentralized cloud network, and the unique advantages of using blockchain technology for web development.

On September 7, 2021, Bitcoin received legal tender status in El Salvador, and soon after the so-called "Bitcoin Law" was passed, many Salvadorans have already opened Bitcoin wallets, however, according to a recent study conducted by the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, in 2023 only 12% of the local population engages in cryptocurrency transactions.
Many other organizations and institutions have attempted the same, but issues such as high fees, wallet issues, and relatively slow transaction settlement times are well documented. Some solutions have been tried to provide speed and efficiency, but more work needs to be done to make Bitcoin-based payments a reality.

The Blockbolt payment protocol is an advanced solution for payments using cryptocurrencies. Its decentralized nature ensures that transactions are secure, seamless, and efficient, making it an ideal choice for businesses and consumers. By driving the adoption of cryptocurrencies, Blockbolt is revolutionizing the payments industry.
Blockbolt’s innovative technology was recently recognized by winning the Sui x KuCoin Hackathon and receiving a grant from the Sui Foundation, proving its potential and demonstrating its commitment to driving innovation.
In addition to its impressive features, Blockbolt also offers a user-friendly merchant dashboard that allows businesses to create e-commerce websites, POS, and link payment capabilities.

In order to promote the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the education sector, ICP Hub México, a subsidiary of Internet Computer (ICP), has partnered with Salvadoran bank DitoBanx to test Chain-Key Bitcoin (ckBTC) as a payment method in retail stores at the University of Aguascalientes, Mexico, the news was announced by the TecnoEmpresa portal.
“Through publications on social networks we want all of Latin America to take off in innovation and technology, adding allies for this is important for everyone, we welcome you to Ditobanx, this is just the first step to the top.”

Today, we are excited to announce a strategic partnership with Omnity, a cutting-edge blockchain interoperability platform, to bring three key tokenized assets (ckBTC, ckUSDT, and ckUSDC) to the Lendfinity ecosystem, expanding our product offering and bringing greater liquidity and flexibility to our users.
Learn more about the Omnity Network: omnity.network.

Why this collaboration is important
The integration of ckBTC, ckUSDT, and ckUSDC into the Lendfinity platform marks a major step forward in our mission to build a fully-featured product. These tokens represent a new wave of asset-backed, cross-chain digital currencies designed to provide stability, transparency, and security to our growing community.

ckBTC will soon be connected to the Cosmos ecosystem through the decentralized exchange Osmosis;

Concerns have been growing for weeks about the influence that Tron founder Justin Sun has over WBTC, prompting competitors to launch alternatives.
Chain-key bitcoin (ckBTC), a non-custodial bitcoin token based on the Internet Computer Blockchain (ICP), will soon be connected to the Cosmos ecosystem through the decentralized exchange (DEX) Osmosis.

According to an emailed announcement on Wednesday, this is the “first entry of proven, secure, non-custodial BTC into the Cosmos ecosystem.”

In the context of the continuous evolution of digital currencies and decentralized finance (DeFi), Bitcoin, as the most influential crypto asset globally, has potential far beyond 'digital gold'. Traditionally, Bitcoin's application in the DeFi field has been limited by its simple design and functionality, often relying on centralized intermediaries to facilitate smart contract interactions, which hinders the full realization of decentralization advantages. Now, with the native Bitcoin integration technology of the Internet Computer (ICP), ckBTC is breaking through these limitations in a new way, opening a new chapter in the Bitcoin financial ecosystem.

Bitcoin has long been regarded as digital gold, representing the safest and most stable form of value storage. However, despite its prominent market position, Bitcoin's development in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space has been constrained by the limitations of its native functionalities. In recent years, with the rise of Internet Computer (ICP) technology, this situation is undergoing disruptive change. Based on the deep integration at the protocol level between the Internet Computer and the Bitcoin network, ckBTC has emerged, opening up new application scenarios and development paths for Bitcoin.