BitGo Buys Crypto Wealth Management Platform HeightZero

Cryptocurrency custody specialist BitGo has acquired HeightZero, a firm that provides software tools for wealth managers whose clients may want to invest a proportion of their portfolios in crypto and digital assets. The financial details of the deal were not made public.

Crypto has a reputation for fast-paced, speculative and complex trading strategies. Many institutional players and some of the original crypto firms are looking to offer secure long-term holdings with a focus on mainstream wealth managers and regulated investment advisors (RIAs).

How the crypto market is poised to react to the likely imminent approval of a spot bitcoin (BTC) ETF ought to be a wake-up call to wealth managers and RIAs, according to BitGo CEO Mike Belshe.

“RIAs should absolutely be calling up BitGo, getting HeightZero, getting qualified custody and doing it now, before the ETF,” Belshe said in an interview. “Because when the ETF hits, there’s going to be massive demand for bitcoin. Now, you can wait for the ETF, and then you can invest in that. But you’re going to miss out on a big growth.”

HeightZero handles portfolio rebalancing, statement generation, tax loss harvesting and automated billing for crypto clients. The firm used BitGo custody for some time before becoming joining the larger firm.

For its part, BitGo recently raised $100 million and is known to be on the acquisition trail.

“This downturn has unfortunately meant a lot of companies coming to the end of their runway and you can be looking at a distressed asset type of purchase,” Belshe said. “Sometimes these can work out and we will of course look at everything. But we’d like to think we have a little bit more strategic path forward, and I think HeightZero is a good example of that.”