Bitcoin Asset Manager Onramp Unveils Multisig Platform, Adds BitGo to Custodians

Bitcoin financial services firm Onramp’s asset management platform has opened for business with BitGo among its custodians.

Austin, Texas-based Onramp launched a spot bitcoin (BTC) trust in April targeting high-net-worth investors.

As with the trust, Onramp is harnessing multisignature (multisig) security, in which several custodians control the private keys to the bitcoin being held. The asset manager has tapped BitGo to perform this role alongside Coincover and Kingdom Trust, according to an announcement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.

Two out of the three keys are necessary to move funds in the vault at the client’s request.

The aim of this approach is to eliminate single points of failure and thus offer institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals reassurance when investing in bitcoin.

Bitcoin-only trend

The new platform illustrates a move toward bitcoin-only services in response to demand from clients who want to invest in the largest cryptocurrency while avoiding exposure to the rest of the digital asset market. BitGo, for example, recently teamed up with financial services firm Swan to form a bitcoin-only trust company, the first such firm in the U.S.

“Bitcoin-only products and services are the market’s way of pricing in a flight to quality and safety,” Onramp co-founder and CEO Michael Tanguma told CoinDesk in a statement.

Tanguma said he believes bitcoin offers investors a degree of regulatory clarity that other digital assets lack. BTC’s classification as a commodity by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is “the only thing the regulators seem to agree on,” he said.

“Investors are starting to realize bitcoin is not just another cryptocurrency, but that it might be the only cryptocurrency worth getting material exposure to,” Tanguma added.