BitGo, a leading digital asset custodian which holds $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency on behalf of its clients, has teamed up with SettleBit, a financial services provider, in order to allow institutions to conduct trades directly from their BitGo accounts.
Established in 2013, BitGo provides digital asset security, custody, and liquidity services. Since the launch of its operations, the company has been expanding its products from custody into clearing and settlement.
In January of last year, BitGo had partnered with Genesis Global Trading, a firm focused on over-the-counter (OTC) crypto trading, in order to allow its customers to receive quotations from Genesis and then immediately sell the Bitcoin (BTC) residing in their BitGo cold (offline) storage crypto wallets.
As noted in a press statement issued on February 4, BitGo’s customers will now be able to perform trades directly from their custody accounts via an API integration with SettleBit’s settlement platform.
The new feature allows the company’s clients to instantly get a price offer matched up with a liquidity network and achieve real-time settlement as soon as their funds have been verified. During this process, the customer’s funds remain securely held in cold storage wallets.
Nick Carmi, head of financial services at BitGo, stated:
“We know that many of our clients want to be able to trade without moving their assets out of cold storage,” Using our settlement API, SettleBit has created a simple and elegant solution.”
The newly developed feature has already seen its first trade being executed. It involved CTM Digital, an entertainment distribution network, conducting a trade of $100,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) on January 22, 2020.
At present, the platform supports the trading of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and the US dollar, however, the company noted that it is planning to support additional utility tokens and stablecoins in the foreseeable future.
An increasing number of digital asset companies have started to introduce settlement solutions for large OTC cryptocurrency traders. For instance, Gemini and Seed CX are now offering these types of services as well, in order to attract institutional traders.