ZURICH, 23 September 2024 – 21.co, the parent company of 21Shares – one of the world’s largest issuers of crypto exchange traded products (ETPs), today announced the integration of the industry-standard Chainlink Proof of Reserve on both Solana and Ethereum mainnets to increase the transparency of 21.co Wrapped Bitcoin (21BTC). The firm is leveraging Chainlink Proof of Reserve within 21.co’s digital asset management platform Onyx to automate real-time reserve verification and enable secure minting of 21BTC.

In May 2024, 21.co announced the launch of 21BTC on Solana, offering users native access to Bitcoin on Solana through a simple and secure solution that creates cross-chain compatibility, liquidity and utility. Earlier this month, the firm announced the expansion of its Wrapped Bitcoin ecosystem with the launch of 21BTC on Ethereum with one of the world’s largest market makers, Flow Traders. 21.co wrapped Bitcoin is built by institutions and for the digital asset community with institutional security and strong mechanisms to help ensure user protection.

Chainlink has securely enabled over $15 trillion in transaction value and its infrastructure is seamless to integrate, time-tested in production, and provides ease of integration and widespread adoption – making Chainlink 21.co’s preferred decentralized computing platform and recommended service for bringing reserve data onchain.

21BTC is a native Solana and a native Ethereum token, fully backed 1:1 by Bitcoin reserves held in cold storage and institutional custody. Timely updates on the status of those BTC reserves are delivered onchain via Chainlink Proof of Reserve, giving users greater visibility and stronger assurances that 21BTC is fully collateralized. Ultimately, this makes Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market cap and proven store of value with deep liquidity, more easily and securely accessible across the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems.

Key benefits of Chainlink Proof of Reserve include:

• Programmatic Utility — By bringing reserve data onchain, protocols can build automated logic around the reserve data backing an asset thus building new use cases and features such as automated onchain risk management.
• Confidence — With secure minting, Proof of Reserve protects against malicious minting by embedding cryptographic guarantees that new tokens minted are backed by reserves, helping to prevent infinite mint attacks.
• Decentralized — As the industry-standard solution, Chainlink Proof of Reserve Feeds are decentralized at the data source and oracle node level, eliminating central points of failure in the sourcing and delivery of external data to Solana and Ethereum.
• Transparent — Chainlink Proof of Reserve Feeds can be monitored by anyone in real-time, allowing any user to independently verify asset collateralization, bringing increased transparency and trust to onchain products.

“21Shares and Chainlink have played fundamentally important roles in ensuring the adoption of a more secure blockchain infrastructure, and we’re excited to see 21Shares integrate Chainlink Proof of Reserve to support 21BTC. Proof of Reserve’s role in enabling a secure minting function is a key step to creating a reliable framework that allows for the tokenization of trillions of dollars in value.”— Johann Eid, Chief Business Officer at Chainlink Labs.

“The industry-standard Chainlink Proof of Reserve is critical for providing transparency into the reserves backing 21BTC, helping to secure its minting function and supporting its widespread adoption across the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems. By securing the minting function and providing timely and reliable monitoring of reserves, Proof of Reserve gives users greater assurances that 21BTC is fully backed by BTC 1:1.”— Eliezer Ndinga, Head of Strategy and Business Development, Digital Assets at 21.co.

About 21.co
21.co is the world’s leader in providing access to crypto through traditional finance and decentralized finance. 21.co offers cryptocurrency exchange traded products (ETPs) via its 21Shares affiliate, as well as blockchain infrastructure technology. 21.co’s products are built on its proprietary operating system, Onyx, which is also distributed to third parties. The company was founded in 2018 by Hany Rashwan and Ophelia Snyder. For more information, please visit www.21.co.

About Chainlink
Chainlink is the industry-standard decentralized computing platform powering the verifiable web. Chainlink has enabled over $12 trillion in transaction value by providing financial institutions, startups, and developers worldwide with access to real-world data, offchain computation, and secure cross-chain interoperability across any blockchain. Chainlink powers verifiable applications and high-integrity markets for banking, DeFi, global trade, gaming, and other major sectors.

Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or reading the developer documentation at docs.chain.link.

Disclaimer

21.co Wrapped Tokens are not available in certain jurisdictions, including the United States. These Tokens are not available to US Persons and US Persons will not be permitted to mint/burn.

The information provided does not constitute a prospectus or other offering material and does not contain or constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy securities or any other regulated products in any jurisdiction. Some of the information published herein may contain forward-looking statements and readers are cautioned that any such forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ. Additionally, there is no guarantee as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness or availability of the information provided and 21.co and its affiliated entities are not responsible for any errors or omissions. The information contained herein may not be considered as economic, legal, tax or other advice and viewers are cautioned not to base investment or any other decisions on the content hereof.

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