Circle announced preparations to launch a new token, Circle Wrapped Bitcoin (cirBTC), aimed at institutional market participants and fully backed by Bitcoin at a 1:1 ratio.
Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, revealed plans to introduce a wrapped Bitcoin token designed for institutional use. cirBTC is positioned as an infrastructure tool for working with tokenized BTC across both DeFi ecosystems and traditional financial use cases.
Each issued wrapped token will be backed by native BTC, with the ability to independently verify reserves on-chain in real time. The new product is being developed with institutional requirements in mind, including OTC platforms, market makers, and lending protocols.
According to the company’s website, cirBTC will adhere to the same standards of transparency and trust applied to USDC and EURC, including full reserve verifiability and global liquidity. From an infrastructure standpoint, cirBTC will become part of the Circle ecosystem and will be integrated with the company’s core solutions, providing a unified toolkit for operations with tokenized assets.
cirBTC is being developed as a cross-chain asset, enabling transactions across multiple blockchains. In its initial phase, the token is planned to launch on the Ethereum and Arc networks, with a broader multi-chain expansion to follow. Specific launch dates are yet to be disclosed. The company opened a waitlist for institutional clients interested in using the asset.
Circle continues to expand its range of financial and infrastructure products. Over the past year, the company announced the launch of a stablecoin-based payments network for international transfers, Circle Payments Network (CPN), introduced a foreign exchange mechanism called StableFX, launched the Partner Stablecoins program to support regional stablecoins, and released its own blockchain, Arc, for financial services.
