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BitGo

Institution · Custodian / infrastructure tech

BitGo is the institutional digital-asset custody and infrastructure firm founded in 2013 that operates BitGo Trust Company, a South Dakota state-chartered trust company with qualified-custodian status under the SEC's investment-adviser custody rule. The franchise is one of the longest-running institutional digital-asset custodians, with a product range that spans regulated custody, multi-signature wallet infrastructure, tokenisation rails, and prime-brokerage-style services for institutional clients. BitGo received a conditional approval for an OCC national trust bank charter in late 2025 (per US OCC National Trust Bank Charter), which would extend its custody perimeter from the South Dakota state-trust regime to a federally supervised footprint if and when the conditional approval transitions to a full charter. For an institutional tokenisation operator, BitGo is one of a small set of US qualified custodians that has consistently appeared in named-counterparty roles across cryptoasset, tokenised-securities, and stablecoin-issuer flows.

What it is

BitGo was founded in 2013, originally as a multi-signature wallet provider, and has progressively built out into a regulated institutional custody franchise. BitGo Trust Company holds a South Dakota state-trust charter and operates as a qualified custodian under SEC investment-adviser rules. The firm operates additional regulated entities in international markets (including a Switzerland-licensed entity, a Singapore presence, and other jurisdiction-specific permissions) for non-US institutional activity.

The asset coverage spans major cryptoassets, USD stablecoins, and a growing share of tokenised securities, tokenised-fund interests, and stablecoin-issuer reserves. BitGo's institutional client set runs across exchanges (the firm is the named custody partner for several large institutional venues), asset managers, family offices, and direct corporate treasuries holding crypto and stablecoin balances.

Operating model

BitGo runs the qualified-custody pattern across three elements.

  • Custody-and-key-management infrastructure with HSM and multi-signature controls, and per-client segregation on the trust's books.
  • A prime-brokerage-style execution and settlement layer giving institutional clients access to trading, lending, and settlement against the broader counterparty graph.
  • A tokenisation and infrastructure layer that supplies pieces of the issuance, transfer, and custody stack for tokenised products needing a US qualified-custodian counterparty.

The product range positions BitGo differently from a pure infrastructure provider (Fireblocks) and from the bank-internal digital-asset desks. The trust-company licence gives regulated-custody authority directly; the prime-services overlay gives execution and settlement reach beyond pure safekeeping; the international entities give cross-jurisdictional coverage the bank-internal desks generally lack.

Tokenisation and platform footprint

The named partnership threads are concentrated in three areas.

  • Custody for tokenisation issuers. BitGo has been cited as a custody venue for several tokenised-fund and tokenised-securities issuers, with the trust-company status providing the qualified-custodian wrapper that the issuance documentation requires.
  • Stablecoin-issuer reserve custody. BitGo has been publicly named as a reserve-custody counterparty for stablecoin programmes, with the specific issuer relationships subject to standard custody-confidentiality.
  • Exchange-and-broker custody. BitGo Trust historically served as the qualified custodian behind several institutional crypto-trading venues, including the now-resolved relationship with Genesis Global Trading and ongoing relationships with the broader institutional venue set.

In APAC, BitGo operates through its Singapore presence and adjacent regional client-facing activity, with named institutional users across the regional bank and asset-manager set.

Regulatory positioning

The principal US regulated perimeter is the South Dakota state-trust charter held by BitGo Trust Company, which qualifies the firm as an SEC qualified custodian for investment-adviser custody. The South Dakota trust-charter route is one of three principal state-trust pathways that the institutional crypto-custody industry has used (alongside New York limited-purpose trust under NYDFS and the Wyoming SPDI route).

BitGo received a conditional OCC national trust bank charter in late 2025, with the conditions to be satisfied before the charter takes full effect. The transition from conditional to full charter is the structural step that would put BitGo on the same federal-supervisory footing as Anchorage Digital (the only firm with a final OCC trust-bank charter as of April 2026). International licensing covers Switzerland (FINMA-equivalent perimeter via local entity), Singapore (MAS perimeter), and other jurisdictions where the firm operates as a regulated counterparty.

Recent activity

  • 24 July 2026BitGo and OTC Markets Group announced their intention to explore a strategic alliance that would bring digital-asset trading and custody to the 150-plus broker-dealers using OTC Link ATS, the SEC-regulated alternative trading system (Ledger Insights). The announcement is written entirely in the conditional, with neither company committed to anything yet, and sketches two phases: near term, trading of digitally native securities issued under existing exemptions such as Reg D, the kind already trading on venues like tZERO and Figure Securities; longer term, contingent on regulatory developments, tokenised versions of the OTC stocks that are OTC Markets' core business. For the second phase the sketched structure has BitGo Bank and Trust, described in the coverage as an OCC-chartered national trust bank, holding the underlying securities and issuing tokens representing entitlements to them, the same model the Depository Trust Company uses with Cede & Co holding the shares and investors holding entitlements on DTC's books; whether the late-2025 conditional OCC approval noted above has transitioned to a final charter is not separately confirmed in current coverage.
  • 2024-2026. Continued expansion of tokenisation-issuer custody relationships and stablecoin-issuer reserve mandates following the SAB 121 rescission.
  • Late 2025BitGo received a conditional OCC national trust bank charter, joining the cohort of crypto-native firms (Circle, Ripple, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paxos, others) pursuing the federal-charter route under the OCC trust-bank charter regime.
  • The named tokenisation-platform integrations and stablecoin-issuer mandates are subject to standard custody-confidentiality and not consistently disclosed in current public coverage.