At present, WBTC has been unpegged for more than half a month, and the price difference with BTC has exceeded 1% some time ago. For a token pegged to BTC, this is already a very exaggerated thing.
Some time ago, due to arbitrage of renBTC, hackers of FTX exchanged ETH for renBTC, and then exchanged it for native BTC through renbridge. However, due to the limited depth of renBTC, the price of WBTC fell relatively. Previously, there was a 2% difference between renBTC and WBTC, which was also exaggerated. Later, the ren team closed the minting of renBTC, and finally the market could not fall further.
Let's talk about WBTC again. In general, my personal judgment is that the risk of WBTC is not very high. From the official website of WBTC, it can be seen that the number of BTC pledged is greater than the number of WBTC issued, and they are all traceable on the chain, so there is basically no problem of asset misappropriation. Of course, if the custodian institution goes bankrupt, it is estimated that there will be trouble again.
The key issue at present is the issue of redeem WBTC. There is no way to change from WBTC back to BTC. Basically, this step can only be completed through merchants. I looked at the burn on the official website and found that the efficiency is very low and the amount processed every day is limited.
For ordinary retail investors, there should be arbitrage opportunities, but now the road is completely blocked. One way is coinlist, which seems to be the only channel for retail investors at present, but after trying it, it seems that the reserves are not enough, and the following prompt appears.
This approach doesn't work.
In addition, we also tried using imtoken's imbtc and other channels, but there was also insufficient liquidity.
I personally think that the efficiency of WBTC-related institutions is very low, which has led to the current results. The main transactions of WBTC should be on DEX and Binance, and the liquidity is not that sufficient.
Of course, for these merchants, they would rather the price go back up, so that they can make a profit of 1,500 to 1,000 yuan or even 1% every day, since it is retail investors who pay the bill anyway.
Therefore, many people who can redeem BTC hope that WBTC will remain at this price so that they can make a good profit. Some time ago, they held a lot of WBTC, but later they saw that the price was not right, so they directly switched to BSC through the cross-chain bridge and did not suffer any losses.
As for the FUD WETH, that is basically nonsense. It is written directly in the code, so there is no need to panic too much.
Disclaimer: I do not currently hold WBTC. If I do, it will only be for arbitrage.