Genesis, BitGo Trust Collaborate on Custody Product for Institutions

Under the agreement, BitGo Trust will provide qualified custody services and cold storage for assets held on behalf of Genesis’ institutional clients

article-image

Artwork by Axel Rangel modified by Blockworks

share

As regulation continues to heat up in the US, Genesis has teamed up with qualified custodian BitGo Trust on a tri-party solution for institutional clients, the companies announced Wednesday. 

Under the agreement, BitGo Trust will provide qualified custody services and cold storage for assets held on behalf of Genesis’ institutional clients, the companies said. 

The teams are hoping to bring tried and true methods of security to the crypto ecosystem

“Institutions require a segregation of responsibilities. Trading, settlement, and custody need to be with separate institutions to minimize counterparty exposure,” Adam Sporn, head of prime brokerage at BitGo, told Blockworks. “In traditional finance, the credit crisis in 2008 led to a significant increase in tri-party relationships and we are seeing the same thing post-FTX in the digital asset space.”

The goal is to combine security with deep liquidity and trading expertise, Genesis added. 

“Institutional clients are increasingly looking to trading partners that can mitigate their

concerns about counterparty risk exposure in the current environment,” Derar Islim, Genesis interim CEO, said. “With demand for a solution rising, we quickly understood that the clear path to meet this demand was to segregate credit and capital risk with regulated and qualified custodians.” 

It’s not the first time Genesis and BitGo have teamed up. In 2019, Genesis Global Trading formed an agreement with BitGo to provide trading services from custody accounts. 

Custody security and regulation concerns have ramped up since 2019, though, but both companies are confident in their level of compliance and transparency. 

BitGo Trust offers a $250 million insurance policy and holds SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications; compliance tools to measure risks associated with technology solutions. 

“Institutional-grade custodial solutions are now expected to offer a suitable blend of the best available technology and the strongest reputational standards,” Gordon Grant, co-head of trading at Genesis, said. “Multi-signature, multi-party computation with hardware isolation, and cold-storage facilities have been part of an opening gambit for service offerings in this respect.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

The Stripe-acquired firm has big plans for a streamlined, multi-wallet future

article-image

Both founders of the former crypto lender have now landed in new crypto industry roles

article-image

Bitcoin’s recent peak is a victory lap for curvers left and right

article-image

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo says institutions are eager to get exposure to tokenization

article-image

Trade isn’t war and prosperity isn’t a contest