WhiteBIT Coin

WhiteBIT had operated since 2018 when it announced WBT in July 2022. The first proposition was practical: users could hold the exchange’s own asset for fee reductions, referral increases, free withdrawals and other account benefits. WhiteBIT dates the launch to 14 August. The allocation totalled 400 million WBT—54 million for a private sale at $1.62, 1 million for the IEO, 120 million for named funds, 200 million for later fund releases and 25 million sent to the burn address.

The supply design pulled in opposite directions by intent. Treasury coins unlocked on a schedule, while WhiteBIT promised weekly market purchases and burns funded by 33% of trading fees and 5% of specified other income. The company’s live page still recorded burns in August 2026, but the white paper also reserves its right to change the amount and timing. In March 2026, WhiteBIT reported another fund unlock of more than 39 million WBT and stressed that allocation to its funds was not the same as immediate market circulation.

The current WBT program gives one coin two account states. WBT on a Main Balance counts as Owning. Moving it into Holding can unlock maker-fee discounts, referral benefits, free withdrawals and AML checks, Launchpad access, lending bonuses and extra deposit addresses. These are WhiteBIT services, not permanent properties of the token contract.

Holding makes the trade-off visible. A fee-free release takes 14 days and earns no Holding bonus during the wait; immediate release costs 10% of the amount. WhiteBIT says it may change the rules. SoulDrop adds a separate reward path, but only after a user links a verified WB Soul, keeps at least 10 WBT in Holding and completes uninterrupted 30-day periods. A self-custodied WBT balance alone does not satisfy those conditions.

WB Network launched in August 2023 as an EVM-compatible, standalone Layer 1. WBT was renamed from WhiteBIT Token to WhiteBIT Coin because it now paid the chain’s transaction fees. The February 2024 Whitechain rebrand changed the network name, not the underlying trust choice: blocks came from validators authorized by WhiteBIT rather than from an open staking set.

Cross-network supply also relied on the operator. WhiteBIT’s white paper says native coins were minted after staff manually verified a WBT burn on Ethereum or Tron and invoked a system contract. Hacken described this manual owner path as exposed to human error. The Ethereum representation has its own centralized controls: an externally owned owner address can pause transfers, blacklist accounts and destroy blacklisted balances, though that contract has no new-mint function.

WBT can pay gas, move between supported networks and qualify an account for services. None of those functions gives its holder a share of WhiteBIT. The white paper expressly rejects equity, debt, profit and beneficial-ownership rights. The exchange agreement instead ties custody and crypto services to the applicable WhiteBIT Group company, KYC, country rules and powers to restrict an account. The result is a mixed dependency: onchain WBT is transferable, while many reasons to hold it remain decisions of a centralized platform.

On 28 July 2026, Whitechain announced that its standalone PoA L1 would be replaced by an Ethereum-settled OP Stack L2. The new design is meant to add an Ethereum canonical bridge and move security away from the old validator set. Whitechain says WBT will remain the gas coin, balances and contracts will appear at the same addresses, and users will not claim or swap anything. Transaction history and event logs, however, will remain with the old L1 before it becomes read-only and is retired.

By early September, that transition was unfinished. Legacy chain ID 1875 was still producing blocks, while chain ID 1874 was the public L2 testnet; mainnet was only targeted for fall or Q4. Even the decimal description needs resolution: the migration notice calls the Ethereum token 18-decimal, while its deployed contract returns 8. WBT’s fourth year therefore begins between two Whitechains—one still live, the other promising a different security model but not yet carrying production balances.