Ecosystem developers bring Bitcoin to Cosmos network

Osmosis, the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) on Cosmos, will be bringing Bitcoin (BTC) to the namesake inter-blockchain communications (IBC) protocol together with Nomic and Kujira.

According to an October 3 announcement during the Cosmoverse 2023 Conference, users can transfer Bitcoin to the Cosmos network via the Nomic bridge supported on Osmosis for 1.5% of the transaction value. Users then receive Nomic Bitcoin (nBTC), an IBC-compatible token issued by Nomic Chain, on a one-to-one basis. The nBTC can be bought, sold, and used to provide liquidity on Osmosis. They are also usable across more than 50 Cosmos-linked app chains. Sunny Aggarwal, co-founder of Osmosis, commented:

“Bitcoin is in deep need of an application DeFi ecosystem, and Cosmos is in need of a base money asset that can serve as its primary store of value. Nomic will help make this long-awaited union for a Bitcoin-centric Cosmos a reality.”

"The Cosmos ecosystem is too important for it to lack a seamless and secure way to receive BTC," added Matt Bell, CEO of Turbofish, the founder and core contributor of Nomic. "We see today’s announcement as the beginning of the most seamless and secure way to on-ramp users into the Cosmos ecosystem with BTC," he continued. 

Native Bitcoin is coming to Osmosis.

Get ready for nBTC from @nomicbtc.

Here's everything you need to know. pic.twitter.com/YuYX9jQamV

— Osmosis ⚡️ (@osmosiszone) October 3, 2023

The nBTC Interchain Upgrade will be released on October 27 and is expected to activate on October 30. Through a separate partnership with decentralized finance protocol Kujira, users can send BTC to the latter's Sonar wallet address and self-custody their nBTC. The same seed phrases can restore users' BTC and nBTC wallets. The nBTC can also be used as collateral to mint Kujira's native stablecoin USK and for borrowing and lending within the ecosystem. In addition, users can bid for liquidated nBTC collaterals. 

Nomic developers say that during the early stages of nBTC's launch, there will be a hard cap of 21 BTCs for the cross-chain bridge. "When the bridge reaches its capacity limit, applications will not be able to generate deposit addresses and users will not be able to deposit more BTC. This parameter will be controlled by Nomic DAO governance in an upcoming upgrade," developers wrote.

#Bitcoin is coming to the Cosmos via @nomicbtc at the end of October

We want to let all you good people know the various use cases that will be immediately available on the Kujira network, so you can put your $nBTC to work when it arrives.

It's going to be tasty

pic.twitter.com/DLx2lzz8hs

— Kujira (@TeamKujira) October 3, 2023

Update October 3, 2023, 20:20 UTC : This article has been updated to reflect comments from Osmosis co-founder Sunny Aggarwal and Turbofish CEO Matt Bell. 

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