In the following order of nuance, the 99% of Bitcoiners:
Don’t know about this
Don’t like the idea of any other distributed ledger attracting capital away from Bitcoin purchases
Don’t know the Ethereum platform is different than any other “altcoin”
Don’t like Ethereum based on valid or fictional criticism
Don’t like WBTC
Don’t like renBTC in its current state
Know about all of this, don't mind it, are not interested in complex transactions, are not interested in turning their bitcoin into an interest bearing asset
The growth to the 1% has been pretty good and fast! Billions of $ of BTC on this stuff over just the last two quarters. Isn’t that how every startup pitch starts? “If we just get 1% of this market ....”
WBTC is essentially custodial. A couple partners hold some multisig keys on all Bitcoin that is deposited to be minted on Ethereum as WBTC. It is mainly BitGo, Kyber Network and Republic Protocol (Ren, the same people behind renBTC). WBTC requires KYC with BitGo to mint and redeem. Centralized, custodial, a few distributed key holders. Feature complete, so its not changing. Institutions like that actually, so it is pretty popular.
renBTC is by Republic Protocol, through their main product RenVM. RenVM allows holders of the REN token to stake 100,000 REN to create a "Darknode", which process all the minting, burning and storage of assets that go between chains. renBTC is Bitcoin to erc20 Ethereum. There are various other assets the Darknode holders process and earn. The amount Darknode holders earn in dollars has been increasing around 20% per month. The issues with RenVM and renBTC is that is actually hasn't reached that state. The darknodes do earn, but the current state does not use the darknodes for the decentralized storage of assets, instead, the Ren team has 12 keys stored around the world and requires collusion between the people on the Ren team to compromise. Now, some people call this is criticism, but this is still better than exchange cold storage which people already trust with billions of dollars of assets. For example, Gemini Exchange (Winklevoss Twins) brag about how their cold storage is 3 keys stored around the globe. lol, only three. People's concern is that while in this current state, the Ren protocol's geographically distributed team can be compromised by a government. Doubtful because nobody in one country has all the keys, and they are quickly speeding towards upgrading away to putting all processing on the darknodes. Anyway, for earning fees as a darknode its current state is quite unique, for users it is a stopgap solution (and not unique enough for BTC on Ethereum) as their bridge simply has more assets and doesn't require KYC or impose any limitations. Both the current and future iteration is using MPC cryptography for security. And again, their team is part of the mastermind behind WBTC. Darknode holders evangelize renAssets and get them into various other DeFi projects, which causes more people to want to mint and burn RenAssets, mostly renBTC so they can earn interest on their bitcoin. As you can see by this thread, many times renBTC is not mentioned at all. But it is the second largest Bitcoin on Ethereum. RenVM is not limited to minting assets onto Ethereum, they have or will be rolling out bridges to other chains as well, to Darknode holders delight.
there are competitors to renBTC such as tBTC, which aims to chisel at just the trustless BTC hegemony and not much else. Its growing decently.
