Digital asset trust company BitGo announced on 24 December that it has $16 billion in assets under custody (AUC). Industry experts believe this could be because big investors are seeking institutional-grade security for custody.
Moreover, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe claimed that the firm was seeing “unprecedented interest” from institutional investors as a result of the pandemic’s economic impact. Especially as institutional interest in bitcoin continues to grow. Stating that the 2020 bitcoin rally was another reason for this development, Mike Belshe said in a statement:
BitGo set out to deliver trust and pave the way for mainstream investment in digital assets.
Besides adoption, corporate entities even looked to the digital asset as a better hedge against inflation, instead of gold. In fact, J.P. Morgan’s Global Markets Strategy group viewed bitcoin as an alternative to gold and suggested a “doubling or tripling” in the bitcoin prices in the future.
Recently, Mogo, a publicly traded company, made an initial investment of up to $1.5 million in bitcoin. Prior to this, MicroStrategy purchased an additional ~29,646 Bitcoins. On 16 December, investment firm Ruffer allocated approximately 2.5% of its multi-strategies fund to bitcoin which amounted to a $15 million purchase, at the time.
BitGo is backed by Digital Currency Group, Galaxy Digital Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Goldman Sachs, among others. Earlier, the firm had made news amid speculation that PayPal Inc. was trying to acquire BitGo. At the time, representatives from both companies did not issue an official statement about the same.
At press time, Bitcoin was worth $23,361.43 with a 24-hour trading volume of $37,091,032,349. BTC price was down by 0.1% and by 1.3% in the hourly and daily timeframes, respectively.
