Bitcoin payments startup Utexo has closed a $7.5 million seed round to build production-ready infrastructure for settling USDT directly on the Bitcoin network, marking a significant push to reunite the world’s largest stablecoin with the world’s largest blockchain.
The round was co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures, with notable participation from Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, Alchemy VC, Ethereal Ventures, Auros Ventures, FlowTraders, and Gate Ventures, among others. Strategic angels from firms including Ledger, Hyperion, and BTC Turk also joined the round.
Utexo was founded to address a long-standing gap in the crypto ecosystem: while USDT has grown into a $184 billion stablecoin juggernaut, the vast majority of its transactions occur on Ethereum and Tron, but not the Bitcoin network. The company aims to change that by making Bitcoin a viable settlement rail for dollar-denominated payments at scale.
“Market cycles come and go, but the need for open and resilient settlement infrastructure remains constant,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. He added that Utexo provides the layer needed to make Bitcoin-native USDT settlement viable, strengthening Bitcoin’s role as a global settlement rail for real-world transactions.
At the heart of Utexo’s technology is a single API layer that abstracts the complexity of the Lightning Network and RGB protocol. These two Bitcoin primitives are powerful but notoriously difficult-to-deploy. Therefore, rather than requiring operators to navigate the technical trade-offs themselves, Utexo lets exchanges, wallets, payment service providers, and high-frequency trading firms route USDT settlement over Bitcoin-native rails through a single integration, without modifying custody systems, compliance workflows, or user interfaces.
Transactions settle atomically in under one second, with fees denominated in USDT rather than fluctuating with Bitcoin block space demand. Critically, all on-chain data is encrypted, preventing the disclosure of counterparty addresses and payment flows — a privacy advantage over the fully public transaction graphs found on other networks.
“We built Utexo so that USDT could move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, with no surprises on costs,” said Utexo co-founder Chris Hutchinson. “Our partners integrate our API once and can route USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over their cost structure.”
The startup’s co-founder Viktor Ihnatiuk highlighted another dimension of the platform’s value proposition: “For the first time, wallets will be able to offer their users free USDT transactions. Utexo provides a built-in growth flywheel: wallets grow their user base, while USDT bootstraps adoption on Bitcoin.”
Key Bitcoin and USDT statistics as of March 9, 2026
The announcement carries a symbolic weight as well. USDT originally launched in 2014 on the Bitcoin network via the Omni protocol, before gravitating toward faster and more programmable chains. Utexo is positioning itself as the infrastructure that finally brings it home, and this time with technology capable of competing with modern alternatives.
The funds will be used to further develop the infrastructure and expand the team, with a focus on security, efficiency, and enterprise integrations.
