Binance Wallet has announced support for Bitcoin Atomic ARC-20 assets

Crypto exchange Binance has integrated Bitcoin ARC-20 atomic assets into its native Web3 wallet through the Inscriptions marketplace.

“ARC-20 is a token standard that allows for the creation of tokens that can be held and transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain,” Binance wrote on May 2. “To celebrate this new integration, we are offering zero-fee trading of ARC-20 tokens until June 2, 2024.

Invented in January, the atomic protocol, modeled after Ethereum's ERC-20 standard, enables the creation, transfer and updating of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain.

“Even if Atomic is updated or changed 10,000 times – this size is only about 2.5 MB of data (250 bytes x 10,000),” explained Atomicas. “Any client, wallet, marketplace, game, or service can quickly validate the atom by running its history according to very simple rules.”

Aside from NFTs, current uses of Bitcoin Atomics include web hosting, file storage, atomic swaps, real-world asset tokenization, decentralized social media, and more. Aside from Atomic, the May 2 update of Binance Wallet includes support for BEVM, a decentralized Ethereum virtual machine-compatible Bitcoin Layer 2 platform that uses Taproot-based Bitcoin (BTC) as payment for gas to execute smart contracts.

The move follows the acceptance of ARC-20 assets by other exchanges.

In February, crypto exchange Bitget announced support for Bitcoin Atomics through its own native wallet. Similarly, crypto exchange OKX has a dedicated full marketplace for Bitcoin Atomic assets.

Despite the threat of technological obsolescence due to the rise of smart contract blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, Bitcoin is rapidly closing the technology gap with the advent of innovations such as Ordinal, Inscripts, Runes, and Atomic.

Last quarter, Orders Exchange completed integration with the Bitcoin Runes protocol to allow fungible tokens to be issued on the native network, and built a Bitcoin asset bridge with Microvision Chain to enable BRC-20 token exchange.

Meanwhile, omnichain product-generating protocol SolvBTC has amassed a total value of $700 million locked from bitcoins generated on Arbitrum, Merlin and the BNB Smart Chain. The protocol estimates that the strategy can generate annual returns of 5% to 10% on users' BTC deposits.

Related: Kraken exchange launches self-sustaining crypto wallet following other CEXs.