Kraken Integrates LayerZero To Make kBTC Compatible Across Every Blockchain
Kraken, an exchange with over 15M+ clients and $207B quarterly volume, is standardizing wrapped Bitcoin with LayerZero’s OFT, ensuring $kBTC is compatible with all blockchains -- fungible and composable across crypto.
kBTC: Bitcoin, Everywhere
kBTC has recently experienced significant growth, with its market cap increasing fivefold since the start of December to nearly $170M today, underscoring strong market demand for trusted, institutionally backed assets pegged to bitcoin. kBTC is live today on Optimism, Ink, Unichain, and Ethereum, with Kraken now able to expand to any of the 150+ blockchains LayerZero supports.
By choosing LayerZero and integrating the OFT Standard, Kraken ensures that 1 kBTC equals 1 kBTC on every blockchain it deploys to, turning Bitcoin from a static asset into one that is portable and composable across ecosystems. This lets users move Bitcoin between any connected chain with zero slippage and Kraken-level security.
“Kraken began by giving people a trusted place to buy Bitcoin. kBTC is the next step — issuing Bitcoin onchain and unifying it across many blockchains, unlocking utility and enabling more use cases than ever before.” - Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs
“With LayerZero’s OFT Standard, Bitcoin becomes truly omnipresent onchain — seamlessly moving across ecosystems. This marks a pivotal step toward unifying liquidity and unlocking native Bitcoin utility everywhere.” – Calvin Leyon, Head of Onchain at Kraken
Interoperability for Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a $2 trillion asset that cannot natively interact with smart contracts. To make BTC usable in DeFi, teams began tokenizing it, locking Bitcoin on its native chain and issuing equivalents on other networks. Wrapped Bitcoin made BTC usable as collateral, liquidity, and settlement across DeFi, powering billions in onchain markets.
Before this upgrade, wrapped versions of bitcoin were fragmented and chain-specific, each with separate liquidity and integrations, similar to how dollars in payment apps are not composable.
Kraken’s integration of LayerZero’s OFT Standard unifies bitcoin across chains into a single asset. The OFT Standard is a smart contract framework that allows tokens to exist natively across multiple blockchains without wrapping or bridging. For Kraken, this means kBTC can be made available securely across blockchains while maintaining a single unified supply.
- For developers and applications, kBTC can function as collateral, a payment instrument, or a savings asset on any blockchain, all backed by unified liquidity.
- For users, kBTC on Ink can be transferred between Ink, Optimism, Unichain, and Ethereum with zero slippage.
Strengthening the Crypto Economy
Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the longest-standing and most trusted cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.
The company has helped shape the foundation of today’s digital asset markets by combining deep liquidity, security, and a long-term approach to building. Kraken offers spot and futures trading, staking, and custody services to millions of clients across 190 countries and operates under multiple licenses globally, including in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.
Kraken’s integration of the OFT Standard for kBTC comes amid growing adoption of LayerZero’s interoperability stack by leading fintechs and digital asset issuers. Tempo and PayPal USD (PYUSD) recently selected LayerZero as their interoperability and asset-expansion infrastructure partners, signaling accelerating institutional adoption of omnichain standards.
Together, Kraken and LayerZero are expanding Bitcoin’s reach across the onchain economy and unifying liquidity for the new era of tokenized assets.
