Testnet opens doors to trading, borrowing, earning, and stablecoins secured by Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s market cap sits well above $2 trillion, but its participation in finance remains limited to opaque centralized services that require owners to give up custody. Alpen’s Public Testnet is now live, a major step toward bringing Bitcoin’s own financial system online. This milestone brings major financial apps like trading, borrowing, earning, stablecoins, and more one step closer to Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin’s not just for holding anymore,” said Simanta Gautam, CEO and co-founder of Alpen Labs. “Alpen is enabling Bitcoin holders to securely participate in Bitcoin finance in all the ways they’ve wanted, without the middlemen. We’re bringing together some of the best teams in the space to create a vibrant financial ecosystem for BTC.”
The Alpen testnet allows developers to experiment, build, and test BTC applications that were once confined to centralized exchanges, custodians, or wrapped tokens outside Bitcoin. Products such as the Bitcoin Dollar will demonstrate what’s possible on a Bitcoin-secured financial system. The Bitcoin Dollar (BTD), being developed in partnership with the Liquity team, is a BTC-backed dollar stablecoin that also enables holders to borrow against their BTC.
Alpen is the distillation of years of research by the Alpen Labs team into secure programmability on Bitcoin. Alpen’s EVM compatibility enables crypto’s largest developer base to use familiar tools to build a financial ecosystem on Bitcoin. Alpen’s zk-rollup architecture enables faster, lower-cost transactions while inheriting Bitcoin’s unmatched security.
“I believe this represents one of the most important breakthroughs in blockchain history, uniting Bitcoin’s unmatched security with the programmability we’ve waited 15 years for. Alpen is a game-changer for Bitcoin, and we’re proud to back a team that’s pushing the ecosystem to new heights.” — Nic Carter, Partner at Castle Island Ventures
Founded in 2022 by four MIT alumni and backed by Ribbit Capital, Stillmark, DBA, cyber*Fund, along with individuals like Wences Casares and Ben Davenport, Alpen Labs is reshaping Bitcoin’s ecosystem into one where many more users can securely participate in finance. This testnet paves the way for an upcoming mainnet launch that seeks to redefine Bitcoin’s future.
Users can learn more at alpenlabs.io and read the launch post.
About Alpen Labs
Alpen Labs is shaping the next chapter of Bitcoin’s story. With Alpen, Bitcoin gets its own financial system, enabling trading, lending, stablecoins, and more without compromising security or decentralization. Founded in New York by four MIT grads, Alpen Labs is connecting innovative finance to the world’s most trusted digital money.
