Earning yield on your Bitcoin (BTC) is a double edged sword. Exposing your BTC to smart contracts risks associated with using Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is risky, but you are able to earn extraordinary yield on your BTC. Usually one would see Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and this is representative of BTC, it should be noted that BTC is not interoperable with other blockchains but this is one way to get it onto those chains.
The Harmony One foundation has for a while touted that their BTC bridge is coming soon, but I was not expecting this soon! Essentially, this allows one to directly get their BTC onto the Harmony one chain in the form of 1BTC and allows you to put said 1BTC to work in DeFi. You can access the bridge here. They are secured by Chainlink oracle price feeds ensuring correct and current prices on the BTC as well as providing other numerous benefits.
You will need to setup a Metamask wallet on your browser first and then add the Harmony One network to the wallet. If you struggle to find how to add the network, simply go to Tranquil Finance here and follow the prompts when connecting your wallet. It should automatically add the network and connect you to the chain.
When you have created a wallet and you are ready to go, you can go to the bridge and connect your wallet. You will need some $ONE in the wallet to interact with the bridge and the chain but also, will need some for the transfer. The amount is not determinable, as far as I can see currently but it ranges in the 6-8 $ONE per bridge range through my multiple tests.
Once you are ready to go you can enter the amount of BTC you wish to bridge over under the “Issue” tab. You can then enter the amount you wish to bridge and then you can select the continue button. You will then be prompted with a transaction from metamask, confirm this and then you just need to follow the prompts displayed on the screen to venture forth.
You will then be met with a page asking you to send BTC to an address, all you need to do is send your BTC to the address they give you (do not use the one in the image above or you will lose your funds). You then can select the “I have made the payment” button and continue through.
Once the funds have all been received and you are notified, you can select the Redeem button on the new popup. From here you can then directly get the 1BTC into your wallet. With this you are able to directly engage in the DeFi ecosystem of Harmony One. In the next coming days, I will drop another article on how using this 1BTC you can earn 12.90% on your BTC in a safe project partnered with the Harmony One foundation .
If you would like to find out more about the Bridge, check out this twitter thread by HarmonyOne. You can also read this Medium post on the bridge.
