Circle has unveiled cirBTC, a wrapped Bitcoin product aimed at institutional users, marking a broader push beyond its core stablecoin business and deeper into tokenized market infrastructure.
Circle said cirBTC will be backed 1:1 by BTC, with reserves that are readily and independently verifiable onchain, and that the asset is being built to work across supported blockchains and the wider DeFi ecosystem.
The company is pitching cirBTC as a more secure and neutral wrapped Bitcoin option for firms that want Bitcoin exposure inside onchain markets without relying on less transparent structures.
Circle said the product is designed for OTC desks, market makers, lending protocols, and other institutions that need tokenized BTC for trading, collateral, and settlement use cases. It also said cirBTC will launch first on Ethereum and Arc, Circle’s own blockchain project, and will integrate with USDC and Circle Mint as part of a broader Circle native stack.
The launch fits with Circle’s stated product direction for 2026, which centers on building what it calls the internet financial system through stablecoins, payments rails, blockchain infrastructure, and developer tooling. cirBTC extends that strategy into wrapped Bitcoin, giving Circle another asset it can plug into its existing payments, liquidity, and tokenization infrastructure.
The timing also puts Circle into a market that already has large incumbents. Wrapped Bitcoin, or WBTC, currently carries a market cap of roughly $8 billion, while Coinbase’s cbBTC stands near $6 billion, showing that tokenized Bitcoin liquidity onchain is already a sizable market.