Citrea is expanding its push into Bitcoin privacy by acquiring self-custodial wallet Crest. Announced from George Town in the Cayman Islands, the deal brings the wallet and its founder directly into the Bitcoin application layer as the companies prepare to launch new private payment features. Users will soon be able to privately transfer BTC and make cross-chain payments without giving up control of their funds.
Private Bitcoin wallet
Crest is designed to address one of Bitcoin’s longstanding trade-offs: its public ledger can make balances, counterparties, and transaction histories visible and traceable. Citrea argues this issue could grow as Bitcoin adoption increases and blockchain surveillance technology improves.
Existing privacy options can require users to surrender self-custody, follow complicated technical processes or move funds into alternative privacy-focused assets. Through Crest, Citrea wants to make privacy a simpler default experience while keeping users in control of their Bitcoin.
Built on Citrea’s Bitcoin-secured execution environment, the mobile wallet uses zero-knowledge privacy pools to shield transactions. Crest founder Meliksah Gurtemel will join Citrea as Product Lead following the acquisition, although financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cross-chain payments
A mobile version of Crest is expected to launch in the coming weeks with automatic shielding, private BTC transfers and cross-chain onboarding from Bitcoin and Ethereum. One of its more unusual features will let BTC holders privately pay EVM addresses in USDC or ETH through cross-chain swaps.
Citrea plans to expand that private BTC functionality throughout its wider ecosystem over time. CEO Orkun Mahir Kılıç of Chainway Labs, a core Citrea contributor, described Crest as a gateway for bringing users and liquidity from both Bitcoin and privacy ecosystems onto Citrea.
Backing for Citrea includes Founders Fund, Galaxy, Maven 11 and Delphi Digital, alongside investors such as Erik Voorhees and Balaji Srinivasan. With Bitcoin’s market capitalization exceeding $1.5 trillion, the company sees easier privacy tools as an opportunity to broaden how BTC can be used while remaining anchored to Bitcoin’s security model.
