Author: Nancy, PANews
"This morning, we took over Wall Street; tonight, we take over the sky." On January 22, crypto custody giant BitGo officially listed, firing the first shot of the 2026 crypto IPO wave.
To commemorate this milestone, BitGo donated a framed copy of the Bitcoin whitepaper to the NYSE, which was hung on the trading floor wall. That evening, a light show featuring the BitGo logo lit up the sky over Manhattan, New York, showcasing its prominence.
Ringing the Bell in Four Months, Limited Returns for Subscribing Institutions
It took BitGo just four months from filing its prospectus with the U.S. SEC to complete the sprint from application to bell-ringing.
Looking at its performance on the first day of trading, January 22, BitGo's stock price rose by about 35% at one point, with an intraday high corresponding to a market cap of over $2.8 billion, before giving back some of those gains. The next day, BitGo fell below its issue price, closing at $14.5. Compared to other crypto companies that have gone public in the past year, this valuation is not particularly high.
Additionally, as a crypto-native company, BitGo introduced an innovative tokenized play after its listing. Through a partnership with Ondo Global Markets, it tokenized its stock, allowing investors to trade it on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.
In fact, as early as February of last year, BitGo was rumored to be considering an IPO. It then submitted its IPO application to the U.S. SEC in September, planning to issue 11.8 million shares at a price range of $15 to $17 per share, aiming to raise up to approximately $200 million, with Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup acting as joint lead underwriters. Ultimately, BitGo set the issue price at $18 per share, higher than the previously indicated range, raising about $213 million.
According to informed sources, BitGo's IPO issuance was several times oversubscribed. For example, YZi Labs announced its participation as a strategic investor. Based on the current market cap, the returns for these subscribing parties are limited for now.
In terms of shareholding structure, after the IPO completion, BitGo's founder and CEO Mike Belshe will retain control of the company, holding about 56% of the voting rights; Valor Equity Partners and Redpoint Ventures hold 4.6% and 3.9% of the voting rights, respectively.
Among them, Redpoint Ventures led BitGo's $12 million Series A funding round in 2014 and continued to invest subsequently; Valor Equity Partners led the approximately $42.5 million Series B round in 2017. Its founder, Antonio Gracias (a board member of Tesla and SpaceX), is also a member of BitGo's board.
In addition, BitGo's investors include Craft Ventures (founded by the first U.S. "AI and Crypto Czar" David Sacks), Goldman Sachs, Galaxy Digital, DRW, and many other institutions. However, as most funding rounds did not disclose specific valuations, the return rates for these institutions are difficult to calculate. Only in 2023, when BitGo completed its $100 million Series C funding round, its valuation was approximately $1.75 billion. Compared to the current listed market cap, the premium space is not substantial.
$10 Billion Revenue Accused of "Financial Engineering"
Having been established for over a decade, BitGo can be considered the "founding father" of the crypto custody business.
As early as 2013, Mike Belshe, an early member of the Google Chrome team and one of the main contributors to the HTTP/2 specification, co-founded BitGo. At its inception, the company launched the industry's first commercially viable multi-signature wallet, requiring users to complete at least two to three confirmations when initiating transactions, significantly improving the security standard for Bitcoin asset storage. Since then, BitGo has continuously iterated its wallet technology and API interfaces and was among the first to enter the compliant custody track, becoming one of the earliest crypto companies to offer regulated qualified 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 also obtained a trust license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and several international regulatory approvals, and in 2025, it was approved to transform into a banking institution, further deepening its compliance layout.
It is worth mentioning that Galaxy Digital once planned to acquire BitGo for $1.2 billion, a deal that was poised to become the largest M&A transaction in the crypto industry at the time. However, due to failure to meet closing conditions, Galaxy Digital unilaterally terminated the agreement, leading to litigation between the two parties. BitGo sought $100 million in compensation, but the court ultimately ruled in favor of Galaxy Digital, and the deal fell through.
To date, BitGo's assets under management exceed $82 billion, serving over 5,100 institutional clients in more than 100 countries, including hedge funds, exchanges, mining companies, and traditional financial institutions.
The continuous expansion of its business scale has driven BitGo's 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 revenue of approximately $10 billion, a significant increase from $1.9 billion in the same period of 2024. This growth primarily came from the development of businesses such as digital asset sales, staking, subscription fees, settlement services, and high-frequency trading. However, despite the huge revenue, the net profit was extremely low. The net profit for the first three quarters of last year was about $35.3 million, which, although an increase from the same period in 2024 ($5.1 million), accounted for only about 0.35% of the total revenue.
Behind the rapid numerical growth is BitGo's transformation from a pure custodian to a broker. As a broker, the amount of client trading can be included in revenue, while the actual profit is only the fees paid by clients.
In this regard, Dovey Wan, founding partner of Primitive Ventures, analyzed that, judging from the quality and growth structure of its income, BitGo is not a high-quality target. Its disclosed core revenue is almost entirely GAAP rev (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles revenue), with the real revenue being pitifully small.
She stated that, based on real revenue performance, it was $146.4 million in 2023, dropped to $131.9 million in 2024, and was $100.5 million in the first half of 2025. Considering that data is often inflated before an IPO, this figure still needs to be viewed with caution. The client trading business, which contributes the majority of GAAP revenue, actually has a gross margin of only about 0.3%. In the first half of 2025, this part of the revenue was as high as $58.8 million, compared to only $500,000 in the same period last year. Staking revenue is accounting-type revenue and can be considered zero. The only segment that reflects growth potential—subscription and service business—has instead seen a significant decline. This revenue was $136.8 million in 2023, dropped to $71.7 million in 2024; and was $40.1 million in the first half of 2025, only a slight increase from $38.3 million in the same period last year. Moreover, BitGo's lending book risk is highly concentrated, with the top three clients accounting for over 50%.
Dovey also revealed that last October, investment banks had hinted that BitGo's IPO valuation was expected to be between $2.75 billion and $3 billion, planning to raise about $300 million, but low market interest led to the fundraising target being lowered to about $200 million.
However, Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Assets Research at VanEck, is optimistic about BitGo's upside potential. He stated that BitGo is the first listed company to provide investors with pure crypto custody business and is one of the few listed crypto companies expected to achieve revenue growth of over 50% in 2025. Benefiting from the growth of tokenization business and the institutionalization of digital assets, as well as a relaxing regulatory environment, BitGo, as a quality custodian with zero hacking incidents, has huge upside potential.
Furthermore, BitGo has demonstrated strong operational momentum. According to Matthew Sigel's predictions, BitGo is expected to maintain a 26% revenue growth before 2028, achieving over $400 million in revenue and more than $120 million in EBITDA, corresponding to a reasonable market cap of over $3 billion.
BitGo has rung the bell for this year's crypto institution listings. After it, many other crypto institutions are waiting to go public. Industry giants such as Kraken, ConsenSys, Ledger, Animoca Brands, Upbit, and Bithumb have plans or have already submitted applications.
Although the market sentiment is somewhat tepid, the crypto bells on Wall Street are destined to ring continuously this year.
