How hBTC Works: Cycles, Accrual, and Settlement
hBTC is the vault token for BTC Basis+, a 4-pillar Bitcoin basis strategy that runs inside a regulated fund: deposit cbBTC (Bitcoin wrapped by Coinbase), receive hBTC, and the token is your entire position.
Before depositing, three questions matter. (1) Where does the return show up? (2) What price do you get in and out at? And (3) how long does each step take? All three answers come from the same place: the fund's NAV, and the schedule it runs on.
The cycle everything runs on
Everything on Syntetika prices off the fund's NAV: the value of everything the fund holds, minus what it owes, divided into a price per share. A number like that is not a live ticker. Producing it means reconciling the fund's positions and cash at custodians and brokers, and having the result attested by the fund's independent administrator. That work runs on a schedule, so the fund prices on a schedule: twice a month.
Syntetika inherits that cadence. Deposit queues close at the cutoffs, on the 13th and the 28th. Valuation strikes follow on the 15th and at month-end, when the fund's NAV is determined and sent for attestation. Attestation takes 5 to 15 days, so the price everything transacts at is always the most recent finalized NAV, one strike behind the fund. That is by design, and it is the same for everyone: one cohort, one price, known before anything moves.
This is how regulated funds have operated for decades. What is new is seeing the machinery onchain: the queue and the cutoff are visible in the UI, and every price the cycle produces is published for anyone to verify.
Getting in
A deposit is a request. Your cbBTC joins the queue, waits for the cutoff, and at the cutoff the whole cohort is processed together: your hBTC is minted at the most recent finalized NAV and arrives in your wallet. Until then, the UI shows exactly where your pending deposit sits, and you can cancel at any time up to the cutoff. The wait is what gets every entry priced at an attested NAV.
While you hold
The number of tokens in your wallet never changes; the value of each token does. hBTC is built on the ERC-4626 vault standard: each token is a proportional claim on the vault's assets. Strategy returns do not arrive as a separate payout. As the underlying strategy performs, the value of the position moves with the fund's NAV, and the return accrues inside the token you already hold.
When a new NAV is finalized and published, hBTC's exchange rate against cbBTC updates onchain, up or down, and your position reflects the new value automatically. There is nothing to claim or stake for strategy returns; gains compound in place. (During an active incentive campaign, campaign rewards are the one exception: they are separate from strategy returns, and you claim them through the UI.)
Getting out
You can submit a redemption request at any time through the UI. Each request joins the cohort at the next cutoff. A request is not locked to a cycle: it can be cancelled at any time up to the cutoff, and one that misses a cutoff rolls into the following cycle.
Redemption pricing follows the same rule as deposits: the most recent finalized NAV. Which means one thing worth knowing before you hold hBTC at all: redemptions do not earn the period in which they exit. The mirror is also true, and it is why the arrangement is even: a deposit entering the same way captures a period it did not earn. The gap is bounded to a single period either way. The UI shows where every pending request stands.
The same machinery, every cycle
The mechanics above do not change with market conditions: the schedule and the attested NAV decide every entry and every exit, in rising cycles and falling ones. For the operational detail behind each step, the docs cover the full cadence: docs.syntetika.io/
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