BitGo Holdings Inc., the US crypto custodian that went public this year, wants prime brokerage to become the main engine of its business as it expands its trading, financing and settlement services, co-founder and Chief Executive Mike Belshe said.
“We would like it to be 100% of our revenue,” Belshe said in an interview in Singapore. “We want to help you make money rather than be a cost center. Nobody wants to pay for custody. We don’t want to charge you for custody.”
BitGo’s custody business faces growing competition as traditional banks enter the space with deep balance sheets, established institutional relationships and the ability to bundle custody with other services. BNY Mellon, DBS Bank and U.S. Bank all offer crypto custody services, while Deutsche Bank announced plans to launch one last month.
BitGo, which Belshe said has more than 6,000 clients, wants custody to serve as the base for a broader set of financial services.
The company launched BitGo Prime in 2020. This year it expanded its financing services and introduced a single access point to liquidity across exchanges and market makers.
Other crypto firms offering prime brokerage services include FalconX, Coinbase and Ripple.
“Why prime brokerage? It’s just logical,” Belshe said. “You’re bringing the assets in. You’re lending against those assets. You’re trading those assets. It’s a virtuous cycle.”
Under a prime brokerage model, clients can keep assets in BitGo’s custody while using the same platform to trade, borrow against their holdings or settle transactions. Each additional service creates another potential source of revenue.
Share Price
BitGo priced its initial public offering at $18 a share in January. It subsequently reported losses for the 2025 year as well as for the first and second quarters of 2026. Its shares fell to a record low of $4.65 in August and closed Monday at $7.38.
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Belshe, who is in Singapore for this week’s Token2049 crypto conference, didn’t give a time frame for achieving his prime brokerage aspirations. But he said BitGo is trying to shift clients away from a custody-fee model.
“We’re trying to migrate all of our clients away from that type of billing model to a prime brokerage billing model,” he said.
Some clients, such as an exchange-traded fund that simply holds Bitcoin, may continue to require custody as a standalone service, but Belshe wants those clients to be the exception.
“Hopefully, in the end, there’s almost no custody,” he said. “The destination is prime brokerage.”