Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., has announced the release of its wrapped Bitcoin token, cbBTC, on the Solana blockchain.

The token is designed to be an SPL asset pegged one-to-one with Bitcoin for reliable value preservation. By the time of writing, Coinbase had already minted approximately 135 cbBTC (valued at about $10 million) and had deployed it in order to kickstart the project’s presence on Solana's network.

Major Solana-based platforms including Jupiter, Meteora, Kamino Finance, Raydium, Phoenix, Jito and Drift have already integrated cbBTC into their services. Among those, Kamino Finance has noted ambitious plans to make it one of the biggest venues of cbBTC transactions in the entire DeFi space.

This development places cbBTC from Coinbase in an already growing list of Threshold's tBTC, Zeus Network's zBTC, and Wormhole's WBTC—creating wider options for users to seek Bitcoin's utilization in DeFi applications.

The launch follows cbBTC's phenomenal growth since it went live in September, with its market capitalization currently over $1 billion. The figure, though representative of immense strides taken by the project, still remains a far cry from BitGo’s Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) which boasts an $11 billion market cap across different networks.