SideSwap Restarts L‑BTC Trading While Reserve Coverage Stays Around 85 %

SideSwap announced that its trading venue on the Liquid sidechain resumed operation on Sept. 10, while the Liquid Federation’s peg‑out process remained paused. The reopening allows price discovery for Liquid Bitcoin (L‑BTC) even though holders cannot yet redeem L‑BTC for on‑chain Bitcoin.

Reserve Coverage at the Time of Restart

At 22:55 UTC on Sept. 10, a Blockstream explorer showed 4,229 L‑BTC outstanding. The federation’s reserve address held 3,601 BTC, implying a coverage ratio of roughly 85.15 % and a shortfall of about 627 BTC.

Trading vs. Redemption

SideSwap’s platform operates a central‑limit‑order‑book market where L‑BTC is the base asset and other Liquid assets serve as quotes. The market reopened, but no direct L‑BTC/BTC order book or post‑restart price data were published, leaving the exact discount or premium to BTC unmeasured.

Redemption (peg‑out) requires the federation to burn L‑BTC and release an equivalent BTC from its reserve. With peg‑outs suspended, the L‑BTC price reflects confidence in the recovery rather than a guaranteed one‑for‑one claim.

Network Status

Block production on Liquid resumed in a controlled mode on Sept. 10, reaching block height 4,051,868 by the end of the day. However, transaction processing and peg‑out operations remained disabled pending a security review and reserve restoration.

Implications for Holders

• Market price is available, but actual exit to Bitcoin is not yet possible.
• Reserve coverage of ~85 % indicates a gap that must be filled before full peg‑out functionality can be restored.
• Other issued assets on Liquid (e.g., USDt, DePix) have separate backing and do not provide insight into the L‑BTC reserve.

Next Steps

The federation must complete its security review, restore full reserve coverage, and announce the resumption of peg‑outs before L‑BTC holders can reliably redeem their tokens at parity.