In an interview with The Crypto Beat on March 6th, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe stated bluntly that traditional financial institutions are inherently ill-equipped to handle digital asset custody. Banks like Morgan Stanley, which operate both trading and custody businesses, face a natural conflict of interest in their profit model. When institutions profit from market transactions, their responsibility to safeguard client assets is inevitably compromised.
In stark contrast, BitGo has focused on pure custody and staking infrastructure since its inception. Its business model relies on providing neutral, secure, and reliable asset保管 services. Losing trust would be fatal to its business. This focus is also reflected in its revenue structure: over 80% of its revenue comes from custody and staking fees. These revenues are stable, predictable, and less affected by short-term volatility in the crypto market, making them more attractive to institutional clients.
Supporting this claim is not only the clarity of its business model but also regulatory breakthroughs. In late 2025, BitGo received unconditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to become a national trust bank. This federal banking license is extremely rare among global crypto companies, marking its attainment of custodial status equivalent to traditional banks under the legal and regulatory framework.
As of September 30, 2025, BitGo managed $104 billion in digital assets, serving over 4,900 institutional clients across more than 50 countries. Revenue for the first nine months of 2025 reached $10 billion, more than five times the $1.9 billion in the same period last year. This data is not a startup's marketing slogan but the solid footprint of a mature institution.
Belshe positions BitGo as the “AWS of digital assets.” Just as Amazon Web Services does not compete with its customers but serves as the underlying pillar for their operations, BitGo aims to be an indispensable infrastructure for the entire crypto ecosystem. Its latest initiatives confirm this vision: providing technical backend support for SoFi Bank's SoFiUSD stablecoin, enabling compliant “stablecoin-as-a-service”; and partnering with Ondo Finance to tokenize its own shares on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, exploring the cutting edge of institutional-grade blockchain applications.
Currently, as the global regulatory framework gradually clarifies and institutional demand for digital asset allocation continues to rise, the custody layer is evolving from a peripheral function to a core industry infrastructure. BitGo's rise is an epitome of this trend.