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Bitcoin Magazine

Citrea Launches Mainnet, Bringing Lending, Trading, and USD Settlement to Bitcoin

Citrea, a Bitcoin application platform backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, announced today the launch of its mainnet, in hopes to unlock lending, trading, and other capital market activity directly on the Bitcoin network.

Alongside the mainnet debut, Citrea introduced ctUSD, a U.S. dollar–denominated stablecoin issued by MoonPay and powered by M0. 

The stablecoin is fully backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bills and cash and is designed to align with the forthcoming GENIUS Act, positioning it as a compliant settlement layer for Bitcoin-based financial activity.

Despite Bitcoin’s roughly $1.3 trillion market capitalization, on-chain data suggests a significant portion of BTC remains economically idle. More than 61% of bitcoin — worth an estimated $1.2 trillion — has not moved in over a year, underscoring the limited availability of native financial infrastructure on the network.

“Bitcoin is the world’s largest digital asset, yet its role in financial markets has been largely constrained,” said Orkun Kilic, co-founder and CEO of Chainway Labs, the company behind Citrea. “By bringing Bitcoin-secured financial applications on-chain, the Citrea mainnet enables capital to be deployed, managed, and settled directly within Bitcoin-native markets.”

At launch, the platform is focusing on two core product categories: BTC-backed lending and BTC structured products. The platform’s lending infrastructure was developed in collaboration with decentralized finance firms Morpho and UltraYield by Edge Capital. 

For structured products, Citrea is working with digital asset market makers such as Keyrock to offer BTC-denominated yield strategies that combine on-chain and off-chain components.

The company says more than 30 Bitcoin-native applications are already prepared to launch on the platform, spanning a range of institutional and retail financial use cases.

 “Citrea is addressing a huge market opportunity in helping to make Bitcoin truly programmable,” said Bridget Harris, an associate at Founders Fund. “By leveraging Bitcoin’s security while enabling application development, Citrea scales the Bitcoin economy as a whole.”

Galaxy Ventures general partner Will Nuelle added that bringing capital markets and stablecoin liquidity directly onto Bitcoin could deepen institutional engagement with the network.

Beyond expanding Bitcoin’s utility, this approach could also impact miner economics. 

As block subsidies decline over time, increased transaction-driven activity may help sustain miner incentives by anchoring real economic usage directly to the base layer.

The mainnet and ctUSD are now live.

This post Citrea Launches Mainnet, Bringing Lending, Trading, and USD Settlement to Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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