WhiteBIT Coin (WBT)

WhiteBIT Coin (ticker: WBT) is a cryptocurrency token issued by WhiteBIT, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Lithuania and founded in Ukraine. Launched in August 2022, WBT functions as the exchange's native utility token, offering holders discounted trading fees and other platform privileges, and also serves as the gas token of Whitechain, a proof-of-authority blockchain operated by the WhiteBIT Group.¹² As of mid-2026, WBT was one of the more prominent exchange-issued tokens by market capitalization, though estimates of that capitalization varied considerably across data providers depending on which circulating-supply figures were used.³⁴

Overview

Ticker	WBT
Category	Exchange-based Tokens
Website	https://whitebit.com/wbt
Twitter	@WhiteBit
Telegram	White_Bit
Contract Addresses
ethereum	0x92...59Copied!
tron	TF...BtCopied!

WhiteBIT Coin was introduced as the loyalty and utility token of WhiteBIT, an exchange that describes itself as the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in Europe by traffic, serving several million users across more than 150 countries.¹⁵ Holding or "holding" (locking) WBT on the exchange unlocks tiered benefits including discounts of up to 100% on maker fees and substantial reductions on taker fees, increased referral interest rates, free daily withdrawals of ERC-20 tokens and ether, complimentary anti-money-laundering (AML) checks, and access to the WhiteBIT Launchpad, an initial exchange offering (IEO) platform.²⁶⁷

In August 2023, WhiteBIT extended the token's role beyond the exchange itself by launching Whitechain, its own Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)–compatible layer-one blockchain, for which WBT serves as the native gas token used to pay transaction fees and power smart contracts.²⁶ The exchange states that the total WBT supply is capped at 400 million tokens across all supported networks — Ethereum, Tron, and Whitechain — with a bridge mechanism that burns tokens on one network whenever an equivalent amount is minted natively on another, so that the aggregate supply does not increase.²

According to figures WhiteBIT has publicly reported, the exchange processes daily spot trading volume in the range of billions of dollars and considerably higher futures volume, supporting a product suite that includes spot and margin trading with leverage of up to 10x, and up to 100x on certain perpetual Bitcoin futures contracts.⁸ WBT's market performance has generally tracked the broader fortunes of the WhiteBIT exchange and the wider W Group business, rather than moving independently of platform-specific news, a pattern common among exchange-issued tokens whose primary utility is tied to a single trading venue.⁹

History

Founding and early growth (2018–2021)

WhiteBIT was founded in November 2018 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, by Volodymyr Nosov, who has remained the exchange's sole publicly named founder and chief executive.¹⁰⁸ According to Nosov, the exchange's name was chosen to signal transparency in a market he viewed as dominated at the time by opaque, poorly regulated platforms.⁸ In its early years, WhiteBIT added a series of incremental features typical of a growing exchange, including blockchain-based address verification and an "Earn" passive-income product in 2019, and margin trading in 2020.⁶ In 2021, the company launched Whitepay, a cryptocurrency payment-processing service.⁶

WBT launch and initial distribution (2022)

WhiteBIT conducted a private sale of WBT from July 1 to August 13, 2022, followed by a public sale — structured as an IEO on the WhiteBIT Launchpad — on August 14, 2022, which the exchange said sold out within fifteen minutes.²¹¹ Reporting on the sale indicates that approximately 54 to 78 million WBT were distributed privately at a price of roughly $1.62 per token, subject to a three-month lockup followed by gradual monthly unlocks, while a separate allocation of roughly one million WBT was offered to WhiteBIT users through the Launchpad without a lockup.² Of the fixed 400-million-token supply, roughly half was designated as treasury coins intended for release over a multi-year schedule to support the exchange's ongoing development and operations, with the remainder allocated to the public and private sales, initial liquidity, and related purposes.¹⁶

The same year, WhiteBIT launched its decentralized exchange, WhiteSwap, and entered a sponsorship arrangement with FC Barcelona, part of a broader marketing strategy that has also included sponsorship of the Ukrainian national football team and the Turkish club Trabzonspor.¹⁶

Response to the war in Ukraine and relocation (2022)

Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, WhiteBIT said it blocked registrations from Russia and Belarus and discontinued trading pairs involving the Russian ruble, a decision the company has said cost it approximately 30% of its user base at the time.¹²¹³ The exchange subsequently relocated its registered operations to Lithuania.¹ WhiteBIT also signed a memorandum of cooperation with Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and its payment-processing subsidiary, Whitepay, has said it facilitated technical infrastructure for United24, a Ukrainian government-run crypto-enabled donation platform.¹²¹⁴ The company has stated that it and its founder have donated more than $11 million of company funds to Ukrainian military and humanitarian causes since 2022, and that Whitepay has processed more than $160 million in related crypto donations.¹²¹⁴

Whitechain and ecosystem expansion (2023–2026)

WhiteBIT launched Whitechain in August 2023, extending its ecosystem to include a proprietary blockchain alongside the exchange, WhiteSwap, Whitepay, a mining pool called WhitePool, an NFT/collectibles marketplace called White.market, and a decentralized identity framework called WB Soul.⁶¹⁵ Through 2024, 2025, and into 2026, the exchange continued to expand internationally, including moves into the United States — marked by a marketing campaign in New York's Times Square in December 2025 — as well as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and, through a regulatory sandbox arrangement, Ghana.¹⁶⁹ In December 2025, WBT was added to a set of cryptocurrency indices maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, which the company characterized as a sign of the token's growing recognition among institutional market participants.⁹

Whitechain

Whitechain is an EVM-compatible layer-one blockchain operated by WhiteBIT, using a Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism in which a limited set of validator nodes, authorized by WhiteBIT, produce blocks and validate transactions.²¹⁷ The network is reported to offer roughly two-second block times and a theoretical throughput on the order of 100 transactions per second, with WBT serving as the token used to pay gas fees for both simple transfers and smart contract execution.¹⁷ Because validator authority rests with the exchange rather than being distributed among an open, permissionless set of participants, Whitechain is considerably more centralized than proof-of-stake or proof-of-work networks, a trade-off that WhiteBIT and outside commentators have described as a deliberate choice made in exchange for faster finality and lower, more predictable fees.¹⁷

WB Soul and SoulDrop

A distinctive feature of the Whitechain ecosystem is WB Soul, an identity system inspired by the "soulbound token" concept for non-transferable onchain identity.¹⁸¹⁹ Any WhiteBIT user who completes identity verification (KYC) can link a wallet to a personal WB Soul, allowing WhiteBIT to attest to a verified identity onchain without publishing the user's underlying personal data.¹⁸ Each WB Soul can be associated with attributes — mutable characteristics such as a user's WBT holding amount — and non-transferable "soulbound tokens" representing fixed achievements or statuses.¹⁹

WB Soul underpins SoulDrop, a recurring rewards mechanism through which transaction fees collected on Whitechain are redistributed to WBT holders. Users who lock ("hold") WBT on WhiteBIT and maintain a verified WB Soul become eligible to claim a monthly reward calculated from their holding amount and holding tier, with rates reported to range from roughly 1.3% to 1.7% per 30-day period depending on tier.²⁰²¹

Tokenomics and utility

WBT has a fixed maximum supply of 400 million tokens, with no mechanism to mint additional tokens beyond this cap.¹⁶ Reported circulating-supply and market-capitalization figures vary substantially across data providers — from roughly 118 million to more than 200 million tokens in circulation as of mid-2026 — reflecting differences in how each source accounts for locked treasury allocations and vesting schedules.³⁴²² As of July 2026, WBT traded in a range of approximately $53 to $60, with resulting market-capitalization estimates ranging from roughly $6 billion to as much as $15 billion depending on the circulating-supply figure applied, placing the token, by most estimates, among the twenty largest cryptocurrencies by that measure.³⁴²²²³

The token's principal utilities include:

• Trading fee discounts. Holding WBT on the exchange, either on the main balance ("owning") or in a locked "Holding" balance, reduces trading fees on a tiered scale, with maker-fee discounts reported as high as 100% and substantial taker-fee reductions at higher tiers.⁶⁷
• Holding program benefits. Transferring WBT into Holding unlocks additional perks, including boosted referral interest rates, free daily withdrawals of ERC-20 tokens and ether, complimentary AML checks, and eligibility for SoulDrop rewards. Unholding requires a standard 14-day waiting period, which can be bypassed by paying a 10% fee for immediate release.⁷²⁰
• Launchpad access. Holding WBT is generally a prerequisite for participating in token sales conducted through the WhiteBIT Launchpad.²
• Dust conversion. WhiteBIT allows users to convert small residual balances of other assets — those below a low dollar threshold — into WBT to keep account balances consolidated.¹⁵
• Deflationary burns. WhiteBIT has said it periodically burns a portion of WBT, funded by a share of trading fees, with a stated long-term objective of destroying at least half of all issued coins; independent market commentary in 2026 described this as a buyback-and-burn mechanism funded by a share of trading-fee revenue.¹⁵⁹

Security certifications

WBT has undergone audits by the blockchain security firm Hacken and received certification from CER.live, a crypto-asset security rating service; WhiteBIT has separately stated that it holds the highest level of Cryptocurrency Security Standard (CCSS) certification and that the exchange itself has not experienced a successful hacking incident.¹²⁴

Corporate structure and ownership

WhiteBIT is operated by W Group, a group of companies that, in addition to the core exchange, includes Whitechain, WhiteSwap, Whitepay, WhitePool, White.market, and several smaller ventures.¹⁵ Volodymyr Nosov is the exchange's publicly identified founder and president; a 2021 corporate filing in Estonia, where an associated entity was registered, listed Nosov as holding a 75% ownership stake alongside several other named individuals.¹²

The exchange's ownership structure has been the subject of public scrutiny. A report published by the Ukrainian non-governmental organization Non-Stop Ukraine (NSU) alleged that Nosov functions primarily as a public-facing figure for the exchange, while asserting that effective control rests with Dmytro Shentsev, a former member of the Kharkiv Regional Council affiliated with the pro-Russian "Opposition Platform — For Life" party (whose activities were suspended by Ukrainian authorities in 2022), and his son, Mykyta Shentsev.¹²²⁵ The same report described WhiteBIT as having operated for a period without a single formal legal entity before registering a number of separate companies in jurisdictions including Estonia, the Seychelles, and the United Kingdom.¹² Separately, a 2023 column published by the Ukrainian outlet Ekonomichna Pravda raised questions about links between entities in WhiteBIT's corporate structure and offshore holding companies, and alleged that WhiteBIT had processed funds originating from BTC-e, a Russian-linked exchange whose founder was extradited to the United States on money-laundering charges.²⁵ WhiteBIT has publicly denied wrongdoing in connection with these allegations and has continued to describe itself as an exchange with Ukrainian roots that maintains a firmly pro-Ukrainian position.¹²¹⁴

Regulatory status and controversies

In January 2026, Russia's Prosecutor General's Office designated WhiteBIT and its parent, W Group, as an "undesirable organization" under Russian law, a classification that criminalizes cooperation with the designated entity within Russia.¹³¹⁴ Russian authorities alleged that WhiteBIT had facilitated so-called "gray schemes" to move funds out of Russia and had provided financial and technical support to Ukraine's armed forces, citing approximately $11 million in transfers, including roughly $900,000 the authorities said was used toward drone procurement — figures that broadly matched WhiteBIT's own public disclosures of its wartime charitable contributions.¹³¹⁴ A WhiteBIT spokesperson said the company had no users or business activity in Russia since 2022 and characterized the designation as confirmation of its pro-Ukrainian stance.¹³

WBT's price fell amid the news of the designation, alongside broader declines in the cryptocurrency market at the time.²⁶ WhiteBIT has continued to expand internationally following the designation, including its stated entry into the United States market in late 2025.¹³¹⁶

Separately, in 2025, WhiteBIT publicly disputed claims circulated on social media alleging a leak of client data, describing the material as a compilation of routinely available blockchain-analytics data rather than evidence of a genuine breach, and stated that it does not negotiate with parties it characterized as attempting to extract payment through threats of reputationally damaging publicity.²⁴

References