Starknet Foundation Vice President of Growth: strkBTC is planned to launch on May 12

Foresight News reports that Damian Chen, Vice President of Growth at the Starknet Foundation, stated at the "Bitcoin 2026" conference that the zero-knowledge proof-based privacy Bitcoin-wrapped asset strkBTC is scheduled to officially launch on May 12. strkBTC maintains a 1:1 peg with Bitcoin, with cross-chain governance managed by a multisig of institutions including UTXO, Twinsnake, Luganodes, and Xverse. A third-party asset screening mechanism is in place to prevent prohibited or sanctioned assets from entering the privacy pool.

After users bridge Bitcoin to Starknet, their assets enter a privacy pool where all transactions and transfers are completely invisible to outsiders. When withdrawing, users can choose to send to one or more new addresses. External observers can only see funds entering the bridge contract and flowing out from the cross-chain contract, but cannot trace the intermediate path. The privacy pool uses a cryptographic credential system, allowing users to hold a view key that can decrypt their own transaction history, which can be presented to tax authorities or law enforcement when needed to enable compliant audits.

Chen pointed out that personal attacks against crypto holders increased by 75% in 2025 compared to the previous year, with 41 crypto-related kidnapping cases occurring in France so far this year. AI tools can now associate on-chain addresses with real-world identities with 90% accuracy in a matter of seconds at a cost of less than a few dollars. Current privacy options (privacy coins, centralized exchange mixing, mixers) all have clear flaws. He noted that strkBTC is still a trusted wrapped asset for now, with plans to upgrade to a trustless bridge via BitVM in the future, and the ultimate goal is to achieve native Bitcoin verification on Starknet after STARK verification is completed. In addition, the team is investigating the quantum-resistance capabilities of strkBTC, with specific solutions to be announced soon.