Citrea Acquires Crest to Bring Private Bitcoin Interactions to Mainstream

Citrea, backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, has acquired Crest to bring Zcash-style privacy to Bitcoin. The goal is to make private Bitcoin interactions effortless, intuitive, and practical for everyone.

The transparent public ledger of Bitcoin has made user balances, counterparties, and transaction histories surveillance targets as its market capitalization exceeds $1.5 trillion. Users seeking privacy must either forfeit self-custody or swap into alternative assets like Zcash, which demonstrated immense demand for simple and intuitive privacy.

Crest, a self-custodial private Bitcoin wallet, will be built on Citrea's Bitcoin-secured execution environment to set a new benchmark for mobile, self-custodial Bitcoin privacy. Crest founder Meliksah Gurtemel joins Citrea as Product Lead, sharing the vision that privacy should be the easiest way to interact with Bitcoin.

The acquisition aims to extend private BTC utility across Citrea's broader ecosystem, and users can join the waitlist at https://crestapp.xyz/.