Alpen Labs has partnered with Circle to integrate USDC and the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, or CCTP, into its Bitcoin finance system. The company said the arrangement will allow Bitcoin holders to borrow, lend and trade with USDC liquidity without selling BTC or moving it to another network. CCTP will connect USDC between Alpen and other supported networks, enabling users to transfer the stablecoin across chains without wrapped tokens for swaps, payments and treasury rebalancing. The partnership extends CCTP's use beyond Circle's Arc-focused interoperability rollout, where the protocol supports native transfers of USDC and selected Circle-issued assets.