- Citrea acquired Crest, a self-custodial private Bitcoin wallet that began inside its ecosystem, making the product its flagship privacy offering and bringing founder Meliksah Gurtemel onboard.
- Crest plans auto-shielding, private $BTC transfers, cross-chain onboarding and private swaps, aiming to make Bitcoin privacy easier for mainstream users.
- Citrea links the acquisition to privacy work from Chainway Labs, positioning Crest as a gateway for users and liquidity from Bitcoin and privacy-focused ecosystems.
Citrea has acquired Crest, a self-custodial private Bitcoin wallet that began within its ecosystem, bringing the team and product closer together. In its official announcement, the company said Crest will become its flagship privacy product, while founder Meliksah Gurtemel joins as Product Lead. The acquisition turns Bitcoin privacy from an ecosystem experiment into a core Citrea strategy, building on Citrea’s zero-knowledge Bitcoin layer and targeting users seeking stronger confidentiality without giving up self-custody.
Crest Becomes Citrea’s Flagship Bitcoin Privacy Product
Crest was built on Citrea’s Bitcoin-secured execution environment and attracted more than 1,000 people to its waitlist before the acquisition. Citrea argues that Bitcoin’s public ledger exposes balances, counterparties and transaction histories, making privacy important for holders who want fewer permanent financial trails. The company sees private, self-custodial Bitcoin as a major unmet demand rather than a niche feature. That view mirrors concerns around Bitcoin’s onchain transparency, where pseudonymous activity can become traceable through transaction analysis.
The Crest mobile wallet is expected to include auto-shielding, private $BTC transfers and cross-chain onboarding from Bitcoin and Ethereum. It will also support private cross-chain swaps and exit routes, allowing users to spend shielded $BTC toward EVM addresses in assets such as USDC or ETH privately. Citrea wants Crest to make private Bitcoin transfers simple enough for mainstream wallet users. The approach echoes the usability ambitions of Zcash shielded transactions while extending private $BTC utility across Citrea’s ecosystem.
The acquisition also reconnects Citrea with privacy work from Chainway Labs, a core contributor that developed Proof of Innocence after the 2022 Tornado Cash sanctions. The open-source framework lets privacy-pool users prove funds are not linked to blacklisted or illicit addresses without revealing their identities. Citrea is combining privacy with compliance-oriented cryptography rather than treating the two goals as mutually exclusive. Similar questions have shaped privacy pools and shielded assets across the industry.
For Citrea, Crest is intended to become the primary gateway bringing users and liquidity from Bitcoin and privacy-focused ecosystems into its network. The strategic bet is that easier privacy can become a distribution advantage for Citrea, not merely a technical differentiator. If Crest launches as planned in the coming weeks, Citrea will test whether Zcash-style confidentiality can attract Bitcoin users through a familiar mobile wallet experience while remaining compatible with broader cross-chain financial activity as adoption grows across the network.
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