Smart contracts cannot maintain custody of assets on another chain, a human has control over that.
Here's an example, do you trust holding actual USD or USDT more?
Not even a question for me, no shot I'm holding onto any tokenized asset, the smart contract means nothing. So many "bridges" have been liquidated it's not even worth entertaining the idea outside of a spot trade that I have no option but to deal with it to make happen.
If someone found out tomorrow that tether isn't holding all of the USD they claim to have the token goes to zero. See Do Kwon
My argument is that the tokenized assets are enormous risk, open source smart contracts mean nothing they are incapable of maintaining custody of the wallets on the respective chains. Behind them is a person who can clear that wallet if they wanted exactly the same way a CEX can.
Can you use them, sure, does it mean you'll lose money if you touch one for a transaction, absolutely not. But holding WBTC and holding BTC are so far apart from one another on the risk scale it's not even in the same room.
BitGo is the primary custodian, responsible for holding the actual bitcoin and issuing WBTC tokens. BitGo Trust Company, Inc DBA BitGo Financial Services, Inc. Which means any WBTC you hold is essentially a IOU on chain where BitGo holds the actual asset. They go down, your WBTC is worthless.
This is not the situation if you hold BTC on chain in a native wallet where you hold the private key. Use them, but understand they are not equivalent and cary their own risks. If you want to hold BTC or whatever, swap for the unwrapped native coin and not the tokenized asset.
Most of us also operate on a risk assessment scale where we prefer to have control over the amount of risk we take and not flying blind into a volcano. But ay, it's your money at the end of the day do whatever you want with it. If you are ok yeeting your retirement into some risky asset you don't understand and hope for the best, go for it I hope it pays off. Personally I like to operate slightly differently.
I'm not suggesting not to take any risk, I'm just wanting to educate people on what those risks are so they can make their own assessment. The point is if you think holding wrapped assets is the same risk level as holding the actual assets you're wrong . It's not an opinion it's a fact, and one backed by history of sad people who lost their assets.
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