Four months of lightning bell-ringing, crypto custody pioneer BitGo goes public to "show off financial skills"

Author: Nancy, PANews

“This morning, we occupied Wall Street; tonight, we occupy the sky.” On January 22, the crypto custody giant BitGo officially went public, marking the first shot in the 2026 crypto IPO race.

To commemorate this milestone, BitGo donated a framed Bitcoin white paper to the New York Stock Exchange, hanging on the trading hall wall. That night, a light show themed around the BitGo logo was also staged over Manhattan, with a full display.

Four months to ring the bell successfully, subscription institution gains are temporarily limited

Just four months after submitting its IPO registration to the US SEC, BitGo completed the sprint from filing to ringing the bell.

From the performance on its first trading day on January 22, BitGo’s stock price rose by about 35% at one point, with a peak market cap exceeding $2.8 billion during trading, then retraced some of the gains. The next day, BitGo fell below the offering price, closing at $14.5. Among crypto companies that went public in the past year, this valuation is not considered very high.

Meanwhile, as a crypto-native company, BitGo also introduced innovative tokenization methods post-IPO, partnering with Ondo Global Markets to tokenize its shares, allowing investors to trade on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.

In fact, as early as February last year, rumors surfaced that BitGo was considering an IPO. It then submitted an IPO application to the SEC in September, planning to issue 11.8 million shares at an offering price range of $15 to $17 per share, raising up to approximately $200 million, with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup serving as joint bookrunners. Ultimately, BitGo set the offering price at $18 per share, above the initial range, raising about $213 million.

Sources familiar with the matter revealed that the IPO was oversubscribed by several times, with YZi Labs announcing participation as a strategic investor. Based on current market value, these investors’ gains are temporarily limited.

In terms of ownership structure, after the IPO, BitGo founder and CEO Mike Belshe will still retain control of the company, holding about 56% of voting rights; Valor Equity Partners and Redpoint Ventures hold 4.6% and 3.9% of voting rights, respectively.

Redpoint Ventures led a $12 million Series A funding round for BitGo in 2014 and continued to increase its investment afterward; Valor Equity Partners led a $42.5 million Series B round in 2017, with founder Antonio Gracias (a board member of Tesla and SpaceX) also serving on BitGo’s board.

In addition, BitGo’s investors include Craft Ventures founded by David Sacks, the first “AI and crypto czar” in the US, as well as Goldman Sachs, Galaxy Digital, DRW, and other institutions. However, since most funding rounds did not disclose specific valuations, the returns for these investors are difficult to estimate. Only in 2023, when BitGo completed a $100 million Series C funding at a valuation of about $1.75 billion, was there a significant premium compared to the current market cap.

Hundreds of millions in revenue called “showing off wealth”

Founded over a decade ago, BitGo is considered a pioneer in crypto custody services.

As early as 2013, Mike Belshe, a former early member of the Google Chrome team and a major contributor to the HTTP/2 standard, co-founded BitGo. From its inception, the company launched the industry’s first commercially viable multi-signature wallet, requiring users to complete at least 2 to 3 confirmations when initiating transactions, greatly enhancing the security standards for Bitcoin asset storage. Since then, BitGo has continuously iterated on wallet technology and API interfaces, and was among the first to enter the regulated custody track, becoming one of the earliest crypto firms to offer compliant custody services.

In 2020, BitGo launched the BitGo Prime platform, beginning its transformation from a single custody provider to a comprehensive institutional financial platform, offering trading, lending, custody, and financing liquidity services to institutional clients. In the following years, BitGo obtained a trust license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and multiple international regulatory licenses, and in 2025 was approved to transform into a bank, further deepening its compliance layout.

Notably, Galaxy Digital once planned to acquire BitGo for $1.2 billion, which would have been one of the largest M&A deals in the crypto industry at the time. However, due to unmet closing conditions, Galaxy Digital unilaterally terminated the agreement, leading to legal disputes. BitGo sought $100 million in damages, but the court ultimately ruled in favor of Galaxy Digital, and the deal “fell through.”

As of now, BitGo manages assets exceeding $82 billion, serving over 5,100 institutional clients across more than 100 countries, including hedge funds, exchanges, mining companies, and traditional financial institutions.

The continuous expansion of its business scale has driven rapid revenue growth, making it one of the few crypto companies able to maintain stable profitability. According to its prospectus, in the first nine months of 2025, BitGo achieved approximately $10 billion in revenue, a significant increase from $1.9 billion in the same period in 2024. This growth mainly stems from digital asset sales, staking, subscription fees, settlement services, and high-frequency trading. However, despite the huge revenue, net profit remains very low, with about $35.3 million in the first three quarters of last year, up from $5.1 million in the same period of 2024, but only accounting for about 0.35% of total revenue.

Behind this rapid growth is BitGo’s transformation from a simple custodian to a broker. As a broker, the trading volume of client transactions can be counted as revenue, while the actual profit only comes from client-paid fees.

In this regard, Dovey Wan, founding partner of Primitive Ventures, also analyzed that from the perspective of revenue quality and growth structure, BitGo is not a high-quality target. Its disclosed core revenue is almost entirely GAAP rev (accrual accounting revenue), with very little actual income.

She stated that, based on actual revenue performance, 2023 was $146.4 million, down to $131.9 million in 2024, and $100.5 million in the first half of 2025. Considering that companies often inflate figures before IPO, these numbers should be viewed with caution. The client trading business, which contributes most of the GAAP revenue, has an actual gross margin of only about 0.3%. In the first half of 2025, this segment generated $58.8 million, compared to only $0.5 million in the same period last year. Staking income is a booked income, virtually zero. The only segment with growth potential, subscription and services, has shown a clear decline, with revenue dropping from $136.8 million in 2023 to $71.7 million in 2024; in the first half of 2025, it was only $40.1 million, only slightly higher than $38.3 million in the same period last year. Moreover, BitGo’s lending book is highly concentrated in risk, with the top three clients accounting for over 50%.

Wan also revealed that in October last year, investment banks hinted that BitGo’s IPO valuation was expected to be between $2.75 billion and $3 billion, with a planned raise of about $300 million, but market disinterest led to a reduction in the fundraising target to about $200 million.

However, Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, is optimistic about BitGo’s upside potential. He stated that BitGo is the first listed company to offer pure crypto custody services to investors and is one of the few crypto companies expected to grow revenue by over 50% in 2025. Thanks to growth in tokenization, institutionalization of digital assets, and relaxed regulations, BitGo, as a high-quality custodian with zero hacking incidents, has enormous upward potential.

Furthermore, BitGo has demonstrated strong operational momentum. Matthew Sigel predicts that BitGo could maintain a 26% revenue growth rate through 2028, achieving over $400 million in revenue and more than $120 million in EBITDA, with a reasonable market cap above $3 billion.

BitGo has sounded the bell for crypto institutions going public this year, and many other crypto firms are waiting in line, including Kraken, ConsenSys, Ledger, Animoca Brands, Upbit, Bithumb, and others, who are planning or have already submitted applications.

Although the market remains somewhat subdued, the Wall Street crypto bell is destined to ring continuously this year.