Binance Wallet Adds Bitcoin Atomical ARC-20 Asset Support

Binance, a popular crypto exchange, has integrated Bitcoin ARC-20 atomical assets into its native Web3 wallet through its Inscriptions Marketplace. ARC-20 is a token standard that allows for the creation of fungible tokens that can be held and transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain. To celebrate this integration, Binance is offering zero-fee trading on ARC-20 tokens until June 2, 2024.

The Atomicals protocol, created in January, is similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard and enables the minting, transferring, and updating of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain. The Atomicals developers explained that even if an Atomical is updated or exchanged multiple times, it only amounts to a small amount of data (2.5 MB) that can be easily verified by clients, wallets, marketplaces, games, and services.

Bitcoin Atomicals have various use cases beyond NFTs, including web hosting, file storage, atomic swaps, real-world asset tokenization, and decentralized social media, among others. Binance Wallet’s recent update also includes support for BEVM, a decentralized Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible Bitcoin layer-two that utilizes BTC as gas fees for executing smart contracts.

Other exchanges have also adopted ARC-20 assets. Bitget, a crypto exchange, announced in February that it supports Bitcoin Atomicals through its self-custody wallet. OKX, another exchange, has a dedicated marketplace for Bitcoin Atomical assets.

Despite concerns about Bitcoin becoming outdated with the emergence of smart contract blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, it is closing the technological gap with recent innovations such as Ordinals, Inscriptions, Runes, and Atomicals. In the last quarter, Orders Exchange integrated the Bitcoin Runes protocol, allowing for the issuance of fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network and creating a Bitcoin asset bridge with MicroVisionChain for BRC-20 token swaps.

The SolvBTC protocol has generated a total value locked (TVL) of $700 million from yield-bearing Bitcoin minted on Arbitrum, Merlin, and BNB Smart Chain. The protocol estimates that users can earn annual returns of 5%–10% on their BTC deposits.