You can think of each blockchain as a silo of potential value. Sometimes a Bitcoin holder will want to use the value their BTC represents to realise an opportunity within a separate blockchain. The most obvious reason is trading.
Most trading by volume happens on centralised exchanges – like Coinbase, Binance or Kraken – and is based on fiat, Stablecoin or Bitcoin pairs. If however, you hold Bitcoin and want to trade a much broader range of currency pairs you can wrap your Bitcoin and then trade wBTC on a decentralised exchange across an exponentially larger range of pairs.
There are two main reasons for investors to understand trading pairs: Some cryptocurrencies can only be bought with other cryptocurrencies, so knowledge of cryptocurrency pairs is necessary to expand your crypto holdings beyond the most common coins. And, knowledge of crypto trading pairs gives savvy crypto investors the chance to exploit arbitrage opportunities — i.e., to profit from differences in asset prices between markets.
All that ‘Turing complete’ means is that Solidity is a programming language capable of programming for any hypothetical computation. Thus, in theory, any computer application can be programmed in Solidity and run on the Ethereum platform. This language, therefore, is what Ethereum’s ‘smart contracts’ are written in.
Not only that, but you can get exposure to a much broader range of yields, loans and opportunities to ‘farm’ for value with your wrapped version of Bitcoin.
Wrapping is now available for the native tokens of pretty-much every main blockchain, providing a level of interoperability. You can wrap tokens for use on the Binance Smart Chain, or the rapidly growing Polkadot ecosystem.
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