Citrea Raises $14M to Expand Bitcoin Beyond Digital Gold
Citrea is the first to expand Bitcoin from a passive store of value to an active, programmable asset by introducing a secondary layer solution using zero-knowledge technology.
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Oct. 31, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Citrea , the first solution to make it possible to build anything on Bitcoin, today announced its $14M Series A funding round, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, with participation from Erik Voorhees, Balaji Srinivasan, Jameson Lopp, Maven11, and other prominent angel and venture investors. Citrea has also launched its exclusive developer program, ‘Citrea Origins ‘, bringing together a select group of developers to build applications on Citrea—the only platform for expanding Bitcoin’s utility.
Bitcoin’s global adoption has solidified its role as “digital gold”, but its broader financial potential has remained untapped due to the lack of a scalability solution that maintains its core principles. This gap has forced users to either keep Bitcoin as a passive store of value or rely on custodians for broader use. This adoption undermines Bitcoin’s role in decentralized finance. Without a proper scalability solution, Bitcoin risks losing its relevance in decentralized finance and becoming obsolete as a network.
Citrea is the first Bitcoin scalability solution to expand Bitcoin’s utility without compromising its decentralization or security. Citrea enhances the capabilities of Bitcoin blockspace with zero-knowledge technology and enables the Bitcoin network to support diverse on-chain applications and platforms. By eliminating the need for intermediaries, Citrea allows users to trustlessly buy, leverage, lend, borrow, and use BTC—transforming Bitcoin from a passive store of value into an active financial tool.
“Citrea is a major milestone in the timeline of Bitcoin’s evolution and the first investment we’ve made in the Bitcoin ecosystem,” said Joey Krug , Partner at Founders Fund. “With the strongest team and best technical design we’ve seen in the Bitcoin L2 space, Citrea’s 0→1 technology enables Ethereum-like rollups for smart contracts on Bitcoin in a trust-minimized way.”
“For the past 18 months, we’ve been building the infrastructure Bitcoin needs to move beyond just a store of value and step into a new era of Bitcoin-backed decentralized finance,” said Orkun Kilic , co-founder and CEO of Chainway Labs. “Citrea combines breakthroughs in cryptography with rigorous engineering to make this vision a reality. Bitcoin not only enables a borderless economy but also serves as the foundation for a censorship-resistant monetary layer. Our mission is to lay the foundation and ecosystem required to drive global hyperbitcoinization.”
About Citrea
Citrea is the first rollup that increases BTC’s utility and activates Bitcoin blockspace for a new decentralized financial ecosystem. Citrea’s vision is to build scalable infrastructure that advances Bitcoin into its next phase: the foundation for the world’s finance.
Apply for the developer program ‘Citrea Origins ‘.
For more information, please visit: Citrea website | Citrea X Account
About Chainway Labs
Chainway Labs, the company building Citrea, was co-founded by four young computer scientists and entrepreneurs with a focus on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and zero-knowledge technology.
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