Citrea Acquires Crest for Private Bitcoin Wallets

Citrea, a Bitcoin application layer backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, has acquired Crest, a self-custodial private Bitcoin wallet. The acquisition aims to bring Zcash-style privacy to the world's largest cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin's transparent public ledger exposes user balances, counterparties, and transaction histories to anyone. This is a problem that will only compound as the asset's market capitalization grows and surveillance tools improve.

Citrea argues that users who want privacy today must forfeit self-custody, navigate expert-only workflows, or swap into alternative privacy assets. The company's answer is to fold zero-knowledge privacy pools into a mobile wallet it now owns.