Utexo, a startup building a Bitcoin-native stablecoin payments infrastructure, announced a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures.
The round also saw participation from strategic angels including Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, Alchemy VC, Ethereal Ventures, Auros Ventures, Arcanum Capital, Paper Ventures, Axia8, FlowTraders, Plan B, Gate Ventures, Sats Ventures, and operators of Ledger, Hyperion, BTC Turk, Echo, Legion, and SOLV.
The company was founded to address a long-standing gap in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. This will enable USDT to be settled natively with Bitcoin with robust, production-ready payment rails. tether’s
CEO Paolo Ardoino said Bitcoin is central to the stablecoin issuer’s long-term vision for USDT. “Market cycles come and go, but the need for open and resilient payments infrastructure remains the same,” Ardoino said.
He added that Utexo provides a layer that enables Bitcoin-native USDT payments at scale, reinforcing Bitcoin’s role as a global payments rail for real-world dollar transactions.
Historically, the Lightning Network and RGB protocols have provided the technical capabilities for Bitcoin-based payments, but their complexity has limited their adoption in production environments. Utexo abstracts these complexities behind a single API layer, allowing payment providers to route USDT payments on Bitcoin-native rails without changing custody, compliance workflows, or user experience.
Chris Hutchinson, co-founder of Utexo, explained the value proposition of the system: “We built Utexo to allow USDT to move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, and with no cost surprises. Once our partners integrate our API, they can route their USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over their cost structure.”
Co-founder Viktor Inatiuk added that this infrastructure will allow the wallet to offer free USDT transactions, while accelerating the adoption of Bitcoin-native stablecoins.
This infrastructure supports atomic payments, privacy-preserving execution, and predictable fees for all transactions, regardless of network congestion.
Payments are made in USDT, based on the Bitcoin security model, and take less than 1 second. Utexo encrypts all on-chain transactions, preventing disclosure of trading partners and wallet addresses, and distinguishing them from public transaction graphs on other networks.
tether and bitcoin
By providing a reliable and predictable payments layer, the company enables Bitcoin to serve as a viable rail for dollar-denominated payments, advancing Tether’s vision of native USDT on Bitcoin.
In February, Tether open sourced MiningOS (MOS), a modular operating system that manages and automates Bitcoin mining operations, and announced it at the 2026 Plan ₿ Forum in San Salvador.
The system uses a peer-to-peer architecture to provide unified control over hardware, energy, and site infrastructure, reducing dependence on proprietary or centralized software.
Utexo targets exchanges, wallets, payment service providers, high-frequency trading companies, and platforms with large amounts of USDT, and is focused on routing existing stablecoin flows on top of Bitcoin rather than launching speculative L2 solutions.
