Citrea, the Bitcoin application layer backed by Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, has launched Citrea USD (ctUSD), a native USD stablecoin designed to provide a unified settlement layer for Bitcoin-denominated markets.
Issued by MoonPay and powered by M0, ctUSD is fully backed by short-term US Treasury bills and cash. The token is designed to align with forthcoming regulatory guidelines, specifically the GENIUS Act, as the industry moves toward more formal stablecoin frameworks.
Mobilising a trillion-dollar asset
The launch aims to address a long-standing inefficiency in the crypto market: while Bitcoin holds a market cap exceeding $1trillion, the majority of this capital remains a “passive store of value” due to a lack of infrastructure for generating yield or settling trades natively.
Currently, Bitcoin-based financial activity often relies on bridged or externally issued stablecoins. Citrea argues these solutions fragment liquidity, trap capital, and introduce additional risk.
Orkun Mahir Kılıç, co-founder and CEO of Chainway Labs, the company building Citrea, commented: “Over $1trillion in Bitcoin is held primarily as a passive store of value today. ctUSD is designed to change that by giving Bitcoin markets a unified and regulated USD settlement layer, so capital can move, trade, and settle without fragmenting liquidity or introducing risky bridged tokens.”
A regulated settlement layer
The new stablecoin will be available to users in the US (excluding New York) and more than 160 countries worldwide. By providing a consistent USD layer, Citrea aims to facilitate BTC-secured lending, trading, and settlement directly on Bitcoin rails.
This development reflects a broader shift in the digital asset landscape, as infrastructure providers seek to make Bitcoin-based finance look less like experimental tech and more like familiar, regulated market infrastructure.
Chainway Labs, the developer behind Citrea, was co-founded by four computer scientists with backgrounds in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and zero-knowledge technologies. The team includes engineers and mathematicians with accolades from international olympiads in mathematics and informatics.