Mike Belshe, the Crypto Custody King at BitGo

BitGo, one of the largest custody specialists in the digital asset industry, celebrated its 10-year anniversary this year. It is an incumbent, it is an institution and it is led by CEO Mike Belshe.

The company was one of a few to raise capital in a depressed market this year, and even more significantly, it raised at an elevated valuation – $1.75 billion – at a time when most crypto companies were being reevaluated down.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2023. For the full list, click here.

At the time, in mid-August, Belshe said the firm would use the $100 million Series C capital to accelerate its acquisitions and global expansion plans. Since then, BitGo has bought wealth management platform HeightZero, formed a “bitcoin-only trust company” with Swan and finalized a strategic pact with Korean TradFi heavyweight Hana Bank.

“There’s going to be consolidation in the space over the next six months,” Belshe said in an interview with CoinDesk TV’s First Mover in June.

That statement was made in a moment of rebirth for the organization. Months earlier publicly traded blockchain giant Galaxy Digital (GLXY.TO) canceled its $1.2 billion acquisition of BitGo, citing concerns over the custodian’s “audited financial statements for 2021,” a BitGo statement read. The reneged deal thrust BitGo and Galaxy into months of litigation, centered around a $100 million termination fee.

It may have been a lucky break, as Belshe noted the firm has not had trouble finding backers. The experience also likely informed the company’s own decision to back out of a buyout that would have saved the troubled rival custodian Prime Trust.

“In the wake of growing global economic uncertainty, we will continue to see a flight to safety. BitGo is well-positioned to meet this demand. We are leading the way to provide wallet and market structure solutions this industry needs for this cycle and future cycles,” Belshe said in an email interview.

It’s known that BitGo is a dominant custodian, which counts over 1,500 clients globally including Nike, 150 crypto exchanges and other companies spanning 50+ countries. BitGo also claims to process 20% of all on-chain bitcoin transactions. The company also launched its Go Network this year, a settlement and market structure system for institutions.

Belshe, a graduate of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo with a degree in computer science, had a storied career prior to BitGo. As an engineer, he made significant contributions to the SPDY and HTTP/2.0 systems, communication protocols and specifications that make the modern internet run.

Like many of his Silicon Valley contemporaries, Belshe started his career at Hewlett-Packard, which at the time housed one of the most august research hubs. He then worked at Netscape, the startup that developed the first web browser and was one of the early hires on the Google Chrome team, among other jobs. Belshe also worked on the influential Internet Engineering Task Force that set standards for the internet.

Belshe has also developed an ethos of open-source development and collaboration at BitGo. The company helped architect the multi-signature wallet design, which serves as the security backbone for many crypto companies and decentralized projects and helped pioneer the “threshold signature scheme” that makes the buzzy field of multi-party computation (MPC) even more secure.

Always a leading voice within the crypto industry, this year Belshe began to speak out and write about the need for sane regulations and industry ethics. In several CoinDesk op-eds, for instance, he has advocated for a separation of custodial and trading operations at crypto exchanges.

A Q&A with Mike Belshe

CoinDesk: What was your biggest achievement this past year?

Mike Belshe: BitGo experienced substantial growth by expanding our product offerings while maintaining a strong regulatory position as the world’s largest independent regulated custodian. The launch of the Go Network provides a new market structure for institutions to settle efficiently. BitGo serves as one of the world’s largest staking providers offering staking out of qualified custody and fiat services. We also celebrated a decade in the industry and achieved further validation with a $100 million Series C funding round at a $1.75 billion valuation.

CD: What’s your No. 1 goal for 2024?

MB: Broadening our global regulatory footprint – we currently hold four custodial licenses globally, and we anticipate obtaining more in 2024. Through the Go Network and strategic partnerships, we will allow more of our clients and new participants to settle transactions across multiple regions with a network of exchanges. With regulated custody as the foundation, we aim to foster alignment among regulators and clients toward the common goal of safe access to digital asset markets.

CD: Please give us a prediction for crypto next year.

MB: Regulators will demand separation of custody and trading as we’ve advocated for some time. Participants, investors, and builders should demand it.