Citrea acquires Crest to boost Bitcoin privacy wallet

Citrea has acquired private Bitcoin wallet developer Crest, bringing Crest founder Meliksah Gurtemel into the company as Product Lead.

The acquisition is meant to add privacy features for Bitcoin users within Citrea's Bitcoin-secured execution environment, rather than forcing them to move to separate privacy-focused assets or use custodial services.

Bitcoin's public ledger has long created a trade-off for users who want settlement transparency but less visibility over balances, counterparties and transaction histories. Privacy tools exist across the wider digital asset market, but many require technical expertise, reliance on third parties or a move into alternative tokens.

That gap has helped drive the use of privacy coins and wrapped products, while efforts to deliver privacy directly for bitcoin have remained more limited. Citrea is pushing a simpler mobile wallet can broaden access to those functions for mainstream users who want to retain self-custody.

Crest has been developing a self-custodial mobile wallet for private bitcoin transactions. Under Citrea's ownership, the product is expected to include auto-shielding, private BTC transfers and onboarding from both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The wallet is also expected to support private cross-chain payments, allowing users to pay EVM addresses in assets such as USDC or ETH using BTC. That would extend bitcoin's use beyond transfers between bitcoin-native addresses into transactions involving other blockchain networks.

The deal adds both product and personnel. Gurtemel is joining Citrea as Product Lead as the company folds the wallet project into its broader push to expand Bitcoin-based financial activity on its network.

Citrea describes itself as a Bitcoin application layer designed to give institutions and users access to Bitcoin capital markets while remaining tied to Bitcoin's security model. It is backed by investors including Founders Fund, Galaxy, Maven 11, Delphi Digital, Erik Voorhees and Balaji Srinivasan.

Privacy push

The transaction reflects a broader effort across the digital asset sector to address the tension between public blockchains and financial privacy. Transparent ledgers are often presented as a core feature of decentralized networks, but they also make it easier to trace holdings and payment flows.

For businesses and individual users, that can create operational and personal security concerns. It can also make routine activity visible in ways that differ sharply from traditional electronic payments, where most transaction information is not published to a public ledger.

Citrea argues that privacy remains a major missing component for broader Bitcoin use on application layers and links the acquisition to demand from users who want easier privacy tools without giving up control of their assets.

"Solving Bitcoin privacy is the single largest unlock for meeting real user demand on a Bitcoin layer," said Orkun Mahir Kılıç, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Chainway Labs, a core contributor to Citrea.

He said Crest would play a central role in those plans.

"Crest is built to be the primary gateway for onboarding users and liquidity from the Bitcoin and privacy ecosystems into Citrea. Acquiring Crest aligns our entire team behind a vision that will generate the most value and adoption for our broader network," Kılıç said. .

Market context

The companies framed the move against the scale of the bitcoin market, which they said has a market capitalization of more than USD $1.5 trillion. As that market grows, scrutiny of wallet activity and transaction trails is also likely to intensify, particularly as blockchain analytics tools become more sophisticated.

That has commercial implications for projects trying to build consumer-facing products on Bitcoin. A mobile wallet that offers private transfers while preserving self-custody could appeal to users who find existing privacy workflows too complex or who do not want to use centralized intermediaries.

The strategy also points to a broader competitive theme in crypto infrastructure, as developers try to make Bitcoin useful in a wider range of financial and payment contexts without asking users to leave the asset behind. In this case, Citrea is using an acquisition, rather than in-house development alone, to add wallet technology and product leadership.

If the integration succeeds, the combined offering would give Citrea a direct route to consumers through a dedicated wallet, as well as a way to channel activity from Bitcoin and Ethereum into its own network environment.