Spend Bitcoin. Never sell it.

Most Bitcoin products ask you to sell the asset to use the value. Maren is the other idea: keep the Bitcoin, draw Bitcoin-backed dollars against it, and spend those dollars the way you already move money.

That sounds simple until you try to design it. Borrowing against Bitcoin is usually a terminal: ratios, health factors, liquidation math, a 0x address at the end. We wanted a money app. Amount first. A name instead of a hash. A receipt that only says done when the chain does.

If the product needs a trading education before someone can pay a person, it is not a money app yet.

The loop

Maren runs on Mezo, a Bitcoin layer 2 where dollars are backed by Bitcoin and gas is paid in BTC under the hood. The loop is three steps.

Deposit BTC

You fund the app with Bitcoin and deposit from a small floor. BTC deposits, link creation, and approvals can require your own BTC for gas. The interface says so before you sign, because “gasless” is not a slogan we get to hide behind when native value is moving.

Draw MUSD

You borrow MUSD against the Bitcoin. Before you sign, you see your ratio, your capacity, and your distance to liquidation. Maren liquidates at 140 percent, thirty points above Mezo’s 110 percent protocol cliff, so a fast drawdown hits our threshold first.

Spend it

Pay a handle, send a link, request or split. Type a @handle and Maren resolves it to a real address before you sign, and shows you that address. Idle MUSD can sit in Earn instead of sitting still.

What “honest” means here

We are handling people’s Bitcoin. Risk gets stated plainly, or it is not stated at all.

• If Bitcoin falls far enough and fast enough, a position can still be liquidated. That is the nature of a collateralised loan. No design removes it.
• You control the signing keys. Payments move MUSD wallet to wallet under your own permit. Deposited Bitcoin is held by the vault’s smart contracts.
• The pooled vault is the honest exception: pooled positions share one trove. Collateral is segregated in accounting, not in custody. If you hold more than the protocol minimum, Maren steers you to a direct trove.
• “Gasless” means Maren pays the Bitcoin fee when the relayer is taking work. It does not mean the fee stopped existing. The app answers that per action, on the screen, before you sign.
• Maren is pre-audit. The beta uses testnet funds only. Do not send real funds until a third-party audit of the vault, earn, and relay contracts is complete and published.

Why we built it this way

The product question was not “can we wrap a lending protocol in a nicer skin.” It was whether someone could use the value of their Bitcoin without selling the asset or turning the flow into a trading terminal.

That forced the interface to do real work. Amount-first borrowing. Handles resolved before you sign. Receipts that report the network, the gas, and a link to the explorer. Nothing more, nothing softer.

The beta is product evidence, not a claim of finished scale. It exposes the real interaction model while keeping its status explicit. That is the version of shipping we will defend.