Circle, the issuer of USDC and EURC stablecoins, announced the upcoming launch of Circle Wrapped Bitcoin (cirBTC) on April 2, 2026. It is a tokenized version of Bitcoin (BTC), which has advantages for use in institutional markets and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
cirBTC token maintains 1:1 parity with original Bitcoin. The assets are fully backed by BTC and can be independently and directly verified in real-time on the Bitcoin network, the company said in a statement.
cirBTC is designed to meet the needs of over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks, market makers (market maker) and required lending protocols High standards of regulatory compliance.
The company emphasizes that cirBTC’s architecture inherits the reliability and liquidity foundations of its previous products, USDC and EURC.. The goal, they say, is to provide a tokenized version of Bitcoin that will serve as a global standard within a regulated financial infrastructure.
Although Circle did not say so in its statement, it is possible (and likely) that cirBTC, like USDC and EURC, has a “freeze” feature that prevents “blacklisted” addresses from moving funds (this could come into play, for example, if a court forfeiture order is issued). In this respect, cirBTC differs from real Bitcoin, where there is no supervisory company that can freeze addresses.
CriptoNoticias reported that Circle had 372 USDC addresses frozen by court order between 2023 and 2025.
One of the competitive advantages of this new asset is its integration with Circle’s technology stack, according to a statement from the company. cirBTC works natively with:
- Circle mint: To facilitate the issuance and direct redemption of assets.
- arc: The company’s institutional infrastructure platform.
- USDC: This allows for fluid operation between the dollar stablecoin and the new wrapped Bitcoin.
As for its technical implementation, Circle has confirmed that cirBTC will be a multi-chain asset. In the initial stage, the token will be launched on the Ethereum network And also in Arc infrastructure. However, this architecture is designed to be expandable to other networks in the future, facilitating capital movement and cross-chain usage.
Circle has enabled the creation of a waiting list of institutions interested in accessing the assets before they are widely deployed. The company has not yet announced an exact start date, but has indicated that it is expected to start operations soon.
