Citrea acquires privacy-focused BTC wallet Crest

Bitcoin layer Citrea said it has acquired Crest, a self-custody privacy BTC wallet, and will operate it as its flagship privacy product. Crest founder Meliksah Gurtemel will join Citrea as product lead. Citrea said Crest plans to launch a mobile wallet within the next few weeks to support private BTC transfers and cross-chain onboarding from Bitcoin and Ethereum. The wallet is also expected to let users swap privacy-enabled BTC into USDC or ETH and send it privately to recipients. Through the acquisition, Citrea aims to bring Zcash-style privacy features to Bitcoin.