Bitcoin Layer Citrea has acquired Crest, a self-custody Bitcoin privacy wallet built on its execution environment. According to Foresight News, Crest will become Citrea's flagship privacy product, and founder Meliksah Gurtemel will join Citrea as head of product.

Crest plans to launch a Bitcoin mobile wallet in the coming weeks with automatic shielding, private BTC transfers, and cross-chain access from Bitcoin and Ethereum. Users will also be able to use shielded BTC for private payments to EVM addresses with assets such as USDC or ETH. Citrea core contributor Chainway Labs previously developed Proof of Innocence, an open-source privacy compliance framework that lets privacy pool users prove their funds are not linked to illegal or blacklisted addresses without revealing their identities.