Utexo, a startup building Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement infrastructure, announced a $7.5 million seed round led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings and Portal Ventures.
The round also included participation from 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 strategic angels, including operators from Ledger, Hyperion, B, Turk, Hyperion and SOLV Turk.
The company was founded to address a long-standing gap in the cryptocurrency ecosystem: enable USDT to settle natively on Bitcoin with robust, production-ready payment rails. Tether’s
CEO Paolo Ardoino said Bitcoin has been central to the stablecoin issuer’s long-term vision for USDT. “Market cycles come and go, but the need for open and robust settlement infrastructure remains constant,” Ardoino said.
He added that Utexo provides a layer that makes Bitcoin-native USDT settlement viable at scale, strengthening Bitcoin’s role as a global settlement rail for real-world dollar transactions.
Historically, the Lightning Network and the RGB protocols have offered technical possibilities for Bitcoin-based payments, but their complexity limited adoption in production environments. Utexo abstracts these complexities behind a single API layer, allowing payment operators to route USDT settlement over Bitcoin-native rails without changing custody, compliance workflows or user experiences.
Chris Hutchinson, co-founder of Utexo, explained the system’s value proposition: “We built Utexo to allow USDT to move on Bitcoin the way money moves: instantly, privately, with no cost surprises. Our partners integrate our API once and can direct USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over the cost structure.”
Viktor Ihnatiuk, co-founder, added that the infrastructure allows wallets to offer free USDT transactions while increasing the adoption of Bitcoin-native stablecoins.
The infrastructure supports atomic settlement, privacy enforcement and predictable fees for each transaction, independent of network congestion.
The settlement takes place in USDT and is anchored to Bitcoin’s security model, which is completed in less than a second. Utexo encrypts all on-chain transactions, prevents disclosure of counterparties and wallet addresses, and separates it from public transaction graphs on other networks.
Tether and Bitcoin
By providing a reliable, predictable settlement layer, the company enables Bitcoin to serve as a viable railroad for dollar-denominated payments, furthering Tether’s vision of native USDT on Bitcoin.
In February, the Tether open-sourced MiningOS (MOS), a modular operating system for managing and automating bitcoin mining, was unveiled at the 2026 Plan ₿ Forum in San Salvador.
The system provides unified control over hardware, energy and site infrastructure using a peer-to-peer architecture, reducing reliance on proprietary or centralized software.
Targeting exchanges, wallets, payment service providers, high-frequency trading companies and platforms handling large volumes of USDT, Utexo focuses on routing existing stablecoin flows over Bitcoin rather than launching speculative L2 solutions.