Backed by major venture investors, the Citrea bitcoin initiative is moving to turn dormant BTC reserves into an active, high-speed financial rail for global markets.
Citrea mainnet goes live with institutional focus
Citrea, a Bitcoin-focused application platform backed by Peter Thiel‘s Founders Fund and Galaxy Ventures, has launched its mainnet, the team announced on Tuesday. The rollout aims to connect bitcoin directly to lending, trading and U.S. dollar settlement, rather than leaving BTC locked in long-term cold storage.
The mainnet is designed to support Bitcoin-backed lending, trading and structured products that settle natively on the Bitcoin network. Moreover, Citrea positions this architecture as a base for an institutional-grade bitcoin settlement layer that does not depend on centralized intermediaries or wrapped BTC representations.
According to the team, the mainnet infrastructure is intended to make it easier for financial institutions and crypto-native platforms to deploy capital onchain while keeping direct exposure to Bitcoin as collateral.
ctUSD stablecoin and U.S. regulatory alignment
Alongside the mainnet, Citrea introduced ctUSD, a native stablecoin designed as the core settlement and liquidity instrument for the ecosystem. The token is fully backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bills and cash, and it is issued by MoonPay, a well-known payments and infrastructure provider in the digital asset sector.
Citrea is positioning ctUSD as a Treasury-backed stablecoin aligned with the GENIUS Act policy framework, in anticipation of forthcoming U.S. stablecoin regulations. However, the project emphasizes that ctUSD remains anchored to Bitcoin-based activity, providing dollar-denominated settlement while preserving BTC as the underlying security layer.
The project describes ctUSD as a liquidity and settlement layer that can underpin institutional-grade activity, including lending, derivatives and structured credit, without shifting value away from the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Mobilizing idle BTC into credit and capital markets
Citrea, which has raised $16.7 million across two funding rounds, is part of a broader wave of Bitcoin-focused projects seeking to expand the network’s role beyond passive holding. That said, the vision is not to replace Bitcoin’s store-of-value narrative, but to enable new credit and yield-generating avenues around it.
As Citrea frames it, the goal is BTC liquidity mobilization at institutional scale. Rather than leaving coins idle in wallets, holders could deploy their assets into lending markets, trading strategies and structured products that settle through ctUSD and remain secured by Bitcoin’s base layer.
Co-founder and CEO Orkun Kilic of Chainway Labs, the company building Citrea, said the mainnet is designed to bring Bitcoin-secured financial activity fully onchain. In his view, the platform can enable BTC-backed lending and bitcoin institutional credit with settlements conducted via ctUSD, giving professional investors a familiar, dollar-based interface around Bitcoin collateral.
Growing competition in Bitcoin-focused infrastructure
Citrea is entering an increasingly competitive field of infrastructure projects that aim to unlock new use cases on the world’s first blockchain. Moreover, the platform is positioning itself against other Bitcoin-oriented networks that seek to extend programmability and capital market functions beyond simple transfers and long-term holding.
Prominent rivals cited by the project include Botanix and Stacks, both often described as Bitcoin layer-2s that enable smart contracts and more complex financial products. However, Citrea stresses its focus on institutional credit, collateralized lending and native settlement as differentiating features.
The team claims that more than 30 Bitcoin-native applications are already prepared to build on the network or integrate its services. These apps are expected to cover a range of financial use cases, from trading platforms and lending protocols to structured products built around Bitcoin collateral and ctUSD settlement.
From passive holding to active Bitcoin capital markets
Across the industry, a growing cohort of developers and investors is pushing to transform Bitcoin from a predominantly passive asset into the foundation of an active capital market. In this context, the citrea bitcoin vision centers on enabling lending, stablecoin settlement and structured finance without requiring users to leave the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Citrea argues that anchoring settlement and collateral to Bitcoin, while using ctUSD for U.S. dollar exposure, can provide a more resilient alternative to wrapped tokens on other chains. Moreover, the team believes this structure could appeal to institutions that want both regulatory clarity and direct ties to Bitcoin’s security model.
As the mainnet goes live and ctUSD enters circulation, Citrea will now need to demonstrate real-world demand for its Bitcoin-based credit markets. The coming months will show whether its approach can meaningfully shift BTC from static storage into an onchain, institutional-grade financial system.
In summary, Citrea’s mainnet launch and ctUSD rollout mark a concerted effort to turn dormant Bitcoin holdings into collateral for lending, credit and settlement, potentially reshaping how BTC participates in global capital markets.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2026/01/28/citrea-bitcoin-mainnet-ctusd/
