Flare Networks CEO Hugo Philion announced plans to extend the network's FAssets technology to Bitcoin through a wrapped token called FBTC, according to U.Today reporting from July 28, 2026. The announcement came against what Philion described on X as a market where "the market sucks, but not forever," and followed FXRP issuance exceeding 150 million tokens.
FAssets: The Existing Model
According to U.Today, the FAssets system allows users to convert coins into wrapped tokens at a 1:1 ratio, giving holders access to staking, lending, and liquidity pools on Flare. FXRP, the XRP-based wrapped token, has already exceeded 150 million tokens in issuance, according to the July 28 report.
According to the same report, Flare announced a six-month roadmap with the XRP Ledger the previous Sunday, targeting up to 5 billion XRP — described as approximately 5% of total supply — into its ecosystem over that period.
The FBTC Expansion
Philion's stated intention is to bring the same FAssets model to Bitcoin through FBTC. According to U.Today, the key argument for attracting large capital to the Bitcoin-integrated version will be Flare Confidential Compute (FCC), a technology based on trusted execution environments (TEEs).
According to U.Today's reporting, FCC addresses "a fundamental problem in DeFi — the complete transparency of blockchains, which discourages institutional investors." The technology is described as allowing funds to execute large transactions and take out loans while keeping commercial data hidden from competitors.
TVL and Protocol Revenue
According to U.Today, growing cross-chain activity already keeps Flare's network TVL above $200 million. That activity feeds protocol revenue into FIRE, described in the report as "an updated value-accrual mechanism that automatically buys back and burns native FLR tokens to drive long-term ecosystem scarcity."
According to the same report, the next six months will be devoted to deploying the code, with large players needing additional time to audit bridges, while lending protocols will require a substantial inflow of stablecoins such as USDT and USDC before they can scale. Philion is reported as not promising an immediate price surge.
Context: Flare and the Digital Rail
Flare occupies a specific niche in the digital rail infrastructure: it provides programmability to assets — like XRP and Bitcoin — that don't natively support smart contracts. The FBTC initiative extends that model to the largest digital asset by market cap, while the XRPFi roadmap deepens integration with the XRPL ecosystem. For live FLR price and network comparisons, see ChainOptics. For institutional context on XRP custody and ETF flows, see our recent XRP whale positioning article.