Citrea has acquired Crest, a self-custodial Bitcoin privacy wallet, and plans to use the product as a mobile entry point to its Bitcoin-secured execution environment. The deal, announced Sept. 24, brings Crest founder Meliksah Gurtemel into Citrea as product lead and places a consumer-facing wallet at the center of Citrea’s effort to offer private Bitcoin transfers and cross-chain payments.
Citrea said Crest’s planned wallet will let users automatically shield BTC, make private Bitcoin transfers, and move funds into the application layer from both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Future features are expected to include private cross-chain swaps, including payments where BTC is used to send USDC or ETH to an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible address without publicly linking the sender’s Bitcoin holdings to the destination.
The acquisition targets one of Bitcoin’s persistent trade-offs: the network allows users to control assets directly, but its public ledger makes balances, transaction histories and counterparties broadly observable. Citrea argues that this exposure becomes more consequential as Bitcoin’s market capitalization exceeds $1.5 trillion and blockchain-monitoring technology becomes more capable.
Crest becomes Citrea’s wallet gateway
Citrea described Crest as a self-custodial wallet built around zero-knowledge privacy pools on Bitcoin via Citrea. Zero-knowledge systems allow a user to prove that a transaction is valid without revealing all of the information underlying it. In a privacy-pool model, funds can be shielded before transfer, reducing the visibility of connections between deposits and later transactions.
The companies have not published a release date for the full wallet, but Citrea said a Bitcoin mobile wallet is expected “in the coming weeks.” Users can join a waitlist through Crest’s website.
Orkun Mahir Kılıç, co-founder and CEO of Chainway Labs and a core contributor to Citrea, said Crest is designed to become a gateway for bringing users and liquidity into Citrea. That framing suggests the wallet will serve a broader role than private payments alone: it would provide the consumer interface through which Bitcoin holders reach Citrea-based applications and services.
Citrea identifies itself as a Bitcoin application layer and says it is backed by Founders Fund, Galaxy, Maven 11, Delphi Digital, Erik Voorhees and Balaji Srinivasan, among others. The acquisition aligns Crest’s wallet development with Citrea’s infrastructure rather than leaving it as a standalone privacy product.
Privacy without leaving Bitcoin exposure behind
Bitcoin users who want greater transaction privacy have often had limited choices. They can retain self-custody while navigating technically demanding tools, use services that require a third party to take control of funds, or move into privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies with different liquidity, market access and security assumptions.
Citrea cited Zcash as an example of a network where privacy technology has been deployed at scale. Its stated objective is to bring comparable functionality to Bitcoin through its own execution environment, rather than requiring users to convert Bitcoin into a separate privacy asset.
That ambition comes with an important technical distinction. A privacy wallet can conceal transaction information within the system it operates, but it does not automatically erase every trace created when funds enter or leave that system. Deposits, withdrawals, wallet behavior and interactions with outside services can remain visible depending on how a user moves assets. The practical privacy offered by Crest will therefore depend on the final product design, the size and usage of its privacy pools, and the way it handles cross-chain transfers.
Citrea’s planned auto-shielding feature would aim to simplify a process that can otherwise require users to manually choose when to move funds into a privacy-preserving pool. If implemented as described, it could reduce the operational friction that has kept advanced privacy tools largely confined to technically experienced users.
Cross-chain payments are central to the plan
Crest’s proposed cross-chain functions could be the most commercially consequential part of the integration. Citrea said users would be able to onboard from Bitcoin and Ethereum, while later versions are planned to support private swaps and payments across chains.
A BTC holder, for example, could theoretically use Bitcoin-denominated funds to send USDC or ETH to an EVM address. EVM, or Ethereum Virtual Machine, refers to the software standard used by Ethereum and a large number of compatible networks. Such a feature would connect Bitcoin-based value to applications built for Ethereum-style smart contracts without requiring users to publicly expose the entire route of a transaction.
The feature remains a roadmap item, and Citrea has not disclosed transaction limits, fees, supported networks, liquidity arrangements or the specific timing for a cross-chain rollout. Those details will shape whether Crest functions primarily as a privacy wallet or develops into a practical payment and asset-routing tool for users active across multiple blockchain ecosystems.
Citrea’s approach also differs from simple wallet privacy features because it ties the wallet to an execution environment. The company is seeking to create a path from private BTC holding and transfers into applications secured through Bitcoin-related infrastructure. That could give Citrea a direct distribution channel in a market where many Bitcoin scaling projects have struggled to move beyond infrastructure and reach end users.
Product delivery will determine the acquisition’s impact
The deal gives Citrea a specialized product team and a clearer consumer product strategy, while giving Crest access to an execution layer designed around Bitcoin. Gurtemel’s move to product lead places the founder of the acquired wallet in charge of translating that strategy into a working mobile application.
Citrea’s description of Crest focuses on self-custody, meaning users are expected to retain control of their private keys rather than entrusting assets to a centralized wallet operator. That design can reduce dependence on intermediaries, but it also leaves users responsible for protecting recovery credentials and verifying transaction details.
The immediate test for the combined team will be delivering a wallet that makes privacy features understandable without obscuring the risks of moving funds through new software and cross-chain systems. Citrea has positioned Crest as a gateway to its network; whether it becomes one will depend on the wallet’s usability, its privacy guarantees in practice, and its ability to support Bitcoin users without forcing them into the complex workflows the acquisition is meant to replace.
Want deeper insight into Bitcoin’s evolving role and privacy trade-offs? Explore our guide: is Bitcoin the future of finance.
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