Two supplies read on November 10, 2026
How much bitcoin does the WBTC token stand for on Ethereum? A public Ethereum node gave one answer on November 10, 2026, when block 26,383,850 was the latest, a little after 10:15 UTC. The wrapped bitcoin contract, WBTC, at 0x2260FAC5E5542a773Aa44fBCfeDf7C193bc2C599, reported a total supply of 116,132.18373262 tokens.
The same node was asked about wrapped ether. WETH, at 0xC02aaA39b223FE8D0A0e5C4F27eAD9083C756Cc2, reported 2,113,670.07 tokens, and the ether sitting in that contract matched to the last of its 18 decimal places.
Two kinds of backing
That match is the whole design of WETH. The ethereum.org explainer says you deposit ETH into the contract and receive the same amount of WETH, a token that follows the ERC-20 standard. Redeem it and the WETH is burned and the ETH comes back. Ethereum’s native coin predates ERC-20, the page explains, so it can’t be traded directly against other tokens without such a wrapper.
WBTC relies on people as well as code. Its FAQ says WBTC is minted when bitcoin is deposited through an authorized merchant and released by an authorized custodian, and burned when someone redeems.
The project’s transparency page, stamped 10:04 on the same morning, showed 116,479.1918 WBTC in circulation across seven chains, of which 116,132.1837 on Ethereum, against reserves of 116,492.0339 BTC held at custodian addresses. The first two addresses on its list, checked on explorer mempool.space, held 3,013.02044052 BTC and 2,620.71394693 BTC, the same amounts the page listed.
Where you see it
Wrapped tokens show up as a W in front of a familiar ticker in a wallet’s token list or on a swap screen. The name alone says little. Ethereum.org lists separate WETH contracts for Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism, and WBTC’s page lists seven authorized chains, each with its own address, from Solana and TRON to Base and Osmosis. Its timeline says the token moves between them through LayerZero’s OFT, a cross-chain token standard.
The mistake: same name, different backing
The usual trap is trusting the ticker. Ethereum.org warns that besides the canonical contract “there are other variants in the wild” that “may behave differently or have different security properties,” and asks readers to double-check which one they hold. Those variants include custom tokens made by app developers and versions issued on other blockchains.
The backer can also change. WBTC’s timeline records a 2024 joint venture between BitGo and BiT Global for its custody, and an undated post on its site, read on November 10, 2026, says it is exploring spreading the reserves across several custodians. It told holders no action was required.
Before treating a wrapped token as the real thing, compare its contract address with the issuer’s own list and look for a reserve page you can check against the chain.