Bitcoin has always been central to Tether’s long-term vision for USDT, but turning that idea into reality required infrastructure that didn’t yet exist. Utexo was founded to build that solution and enable Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement with robust, production-ready payment rails. The company now announces the raise of a $7.5M seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, and others.
“Bitcoin has always been central to Tether’s long-term vision for USDT,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether. “Market cycles come and go, but the need for open and resilient settlement infrastructure remains constant. What has been missing is production-ready infrastructure that makes Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement viable at scale. Utexo provides that layer.”
Historically, Lightning Network and RGB have unlocked powerful capabilities on Bitcoin but remained prohibitively complex to deploy and operate in production environments. Utexo’s role is to abstract that complexity away. By providing a single API layer, Utexo enables payment operators to route USDT settlement directly over Bitcoin-native rails without needing to manage the underlying technical trade-offs, rewrite user experiences, or change custody or compliance workflows.
“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 Chris Hutchinson, Co-founder of Utexo. “Utexo combines Bitcoin, Lightning, and RGB into a usable payment stack.”
The infrastructure enables native USDT settlement directly on Bitcoin, including the first-ever availability of USDT over the Lightning Network, with fees that are fixed, predictable, and known in advance for every transaction, regardless of network conditions. Settlement costs are paid in USDT and do not fluctuate with congestion or blockspace demand, while transactions settle atomically and privately, anchored to Bitcoin’s security model and completed in under 1 second.
Unlike public transaction graphs on other networks, Utexo’s approach prioritizes private execution with only encrypted transactions being written on-chain, preventing the disclosure of counterparties’ payment flows and wallet addresses. This allows partners to move stablecoin volume without exposure to fee volatility, congestion risk, or the weaker trust assumptions associated with fully public ledgers, bridges, and wrapped assets.
Utexo has designed its infrastructure offerings specifically for payment service providers, exchanges, wallets, high-frequency trading firms, and platforms already moving large volumes of USDT for merchant settlement, payouts, cross-border transfers and global commerce. Rather than attempting to bootstrap new L2 solutions or chase speculative demand, Utexo’s go-to-market strategy focuses on routing existing USDT flows onto Bitcoin as infrastructure finally catches up with long-standing operational needs.
With stablecoins increasingly replacing legacy payment rails worldwide, Utexo makes it possible for Bitcoin to function as a viable settlement layer for dollar-denominated payments, bringing Tether’s long-standing vision for native USDT on Bitcoin into production for the first time. For more information on Utexo’s Bitcoin-native USDT settlement infrastructure and upcoming integrations, visit utexo.com.
