One of those questions, as a non-techie, that I sometime like asking in here and hopefully gets some reasonable, non cynical answer:

Is there any merit to the idea of wrapped BTC as the store of value/collateral, running on other networks?

I recently heard someone mention this, without further explanation.

Well, he said BTC as a network is slow and inefficient (energy use yadda-yadda -- this is where that person lost me), but argued that BTC does have merit as store of value (duh!), so why not use a wrapped form of it on this other network.

Similar to what I asked the other day about what is it that all these other networks are actually trying to DO. What would be the purpose of wrapping BTC to run it on some other chain?

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The the trust falls on the shoulders of the operator of the bridge (a tool to switch networks).

Your BTC should stay there locked and you should be able to get it back but if there is no liquidity when you want to take it back?

I would use, though, the Rootstock network for such cases or Liquid (which I don’t know that close)

Rootstock or RSK is EVN compatible bitcoin native sidechain.

It has the limit of RBTC which the the peg to BTC and also usese merged mining which is basically same node is operating the both networks.

There are still some trust but still is much better than wrapped bitcoin on ETH or Solana or whatever managed blockchain.

Regarding the use cases there might be some like stable coins or some kind of contracts like for example a promissory note register to secure non collateralised loans. Or NFTs.

Thanks for your two replies.

I understand the trust risk with bridges, indeed. But about the use cases - why couldn't all those run on BTC itself?

You will have to follow Bitcoin network block rules and smart contracts are less flexible in my layman opinion regarding smart contracts.

But I think it is actually better because we keep the main chain cleaner and just for settlements in that way.