BitGo, a pioneer of multi-signature technology, today announced that BitGo Trust Company gained US approval as a regulated, qualified custodian of cryptocurrencies for institutional investors.
The company’s BitGo Custody solution was approved by South Dakota regulators at the Division of Banking, charged with the regulation and supervision of state chartered and licensed financial institutions, “to maintain stability and public confidence in state chartered institutions and to protect public interests.”
The Palo Alto-based company, which offers enterprise-grade Bitcoin wallet solutions, as well as API access to its underlying security platform, introduced the industry’s first multi-sig hot wallet in 2013.
By leveraging its pioneering institutional-grade, multi-signature security, BitGo is working to establish itself as a qualified custodian that can deliver both top-level security and regulatory compliance.
BitGo expects that the approval by the South Dakota Division of Banking will also allow the company to act as a custodian across the US. According to the company’s chief compliance and legal officer Shahla Ali, “generally other states will give you reciprocity in the sense that other states have money transmission laws and they’ll exempt you from money transmission requirements.”
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe, a Silicon Valley veteran who served on the founding team of Google Chrome, says, “Custody has been the missing piece of cryptocurrency market infrastructure, and this gap has kept institutional investors out of the market.”
In a statement to Coindesk, Ali says that the approval will allow broker dealers to enter the cryptocurrency market with security.
“The trust company will enable us to offer a qualified custodial offering that is regulated, that has the money laundering and know your customer requirements. Our custodian offering already has money laundering and KYC requirements … [but the Trust is] for institutional clients … especially for those who are registered advisors and broker dealers.”
As a qualified custodian that is neither a bank nor an exchange, BitGo has emerged as a critical bridge for the digital economy.
“Traditional custodians don’t have experience handling cryptocurrency. Exchanges that double as custodians present a conflict of interest and raise regulatory concerns,” says Belshe.
The company says its position in the industry allows it to deliver on strict policies, procedures, controls and disclosures while serving a client base that spans more than 50 countries and includes the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
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BitGo has offices in the US, London, Singapore and Tokyo. The company intends to start storing storing digital assets under BitGo Trust after the expiration of a 30-day waiting period, which, under South Dakota laws, allows the general public to file an appeal against the approval.
