Author: Nancy, PANews

"This morning, we occupied Wall Street; tonight, we occupy the sky." On January 22, cryptocurrency custody giant BitGo officially went public, marking the first cryptocurrency IPO of 2026.

To commemorate this milestone, BitGo donated a framed Bitcoin white paper to the New York Stock Exchange, which was hung on the trading hall wall. That night, a light show themed around the BitGo logo was also staged over Manhattan, creating a grand spectacle.

Successful Bell Ringing in Four Months, Limited Returns for Subscription Institutions

Just four months after submitting its prospectus to the U.S. SEC, BitGo completed the sprint from filing to ringing the bell.

From the performance on the first day of trading on January 22, BitGo's stock price rose by about 35% at one point, with a peak market value exceeding $2.8 billion during the day, before giving back some gains. The next day, BitGo's stock fell below the issue price, closing at $14.5. Compared to other cryptocurrency companies that went public in the past year, this valuation is not particularly high.

At the same time, as a cryptocurrency-native company, BitGo introduced tokenization innovations after going public, partnering with Ondo Global Markets to tokenize its stock, allowing investors to trade on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.

In fact, as early as February last year, news emerged that BitGo was considering an IPO, and in September, it submitted its IPO application to the U.S. SEC, planning to issue 11.8 million shares at a price range of $15 to $17 per share, aiming to raise up to $200 million, with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup serving as co-lead underwriters. Ultimately, BitGo set the issue price at $18 per share, higher than the previous range, raising approximately $213 million.

According to insiders, BitGo's IPO issuance received several times the oversubscription, with YZi Labs announcing its participation as a strategic investor. Based on the current market value, the returns for these subscribers are temporarily limited.

In terms of equity structure, after the IPO, BitGo 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.

Redpoint Ventures led BitGo's $12 million Series A financing in 2014 and has continued to increase its investment since then; Valor Equity Partners led a Series B financing of about $42.5 million in 2017, and its founder Antonio Gracias (a board member of Tesla and SpaceX) is also a member of BitGo's board.

Additionally, BitGo's investors include Craft Ventures, founded by the U.S.'s first "AI and cryptocurrency czar" David Sacks, Goldman Sachs, Galaxy Digital, DRW, and many other institutions. However, since most financing rounds did not disclose specific valuations, the return rates for these institutions are difficult to calculate. In 2023, when BitGo completed a $100 million Series C financing, its valuation was approximately $1.75 billion, which does not leave much premium compared to the current public market value.

$10 Billion Revenue Criticized as "Financial Showmanship"

Founded over a decade ago, BitGo can be considered the "pioneer" of cryptocurrency custody services.

In 2013, Mike Belshe, an early member of the Google Chrome team and a major contributor to the HTTP/2 specification, co-founded BitGo. From the outset, the company launched the industry's first commercially viable multi-signature wallet, requiring users to complete at least 2 to 3 confirmations when initiating transactions, significantly enhancing the security storage standards for Bitcoin assets. Since then, BitGo has continuously iterated on wallet technology and API interfaces, and was one of the first cryptocurrency companies to enter the compliant custody space, providing regulated qualified custody services.

In 2020, BitGo launched the BitGo Prime platform, beginning its transformation from a single custody service provider to a comprehensive institutional financial platform, offering liquidity services such as trading, lending, custody, and financing to institutional clients. In the following years, BitGo obtained a trust license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and several international regulatory licenses, 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, which would have been the largest merger in the cryptocurrency industry at the time. However, due to failure to meet closing conditions, Galaxy Digital ultimately unilaterally terminated the agreement, leading to a lawsuit, with BitGo seeking $100 million in damages. The court ultimately ruled in favor of Galaxy Digital, and the deal was "aborted."

As of now, BitGo manages assets exceeding $82 billion, serving over 5,100 institutional clients across more than 100 countries, including hedge funds, exchanges, mining companies, and traditional financial institutions.

The continuous expansion of its business scale has driven rapid revenue growth for BitGo, making it one of the few cryptocurrency 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 digital asset sales, staking, subscription fees, settlement services, and high-frequency trading. However, despite the massive revenue, the net profit remains very low, with net profit for the first three quarters of last year at approximately $35.3 million, although this is an increase from $5.1 million in the same period of 2024, it only accounts for about 0.35% of total revenue.

The rapid growth in numbers reflects BitGo's transformation from a pure custodian to a broker. As a broker, the amounts traded on behalf of clients can be counted as revenue, while the actual profit comes only from the fees paid by clients.

In this regard, Dovey Wan, founding partner of Primitive Ventures, also analyzed that from the perspective of revenue quality and growth structure, BitGo is not a high-quality target. Almost all of its disclosed core revenue is GAAP revenue, with real revenue being quite scarce.

She stated that in terms of actual revenue performance, 2023 was $146.4 million, dropping to $131.9 million in 2024, and $100.5 million in the first half of 2025. Considering that data is usually inflated before an IPO, this figure still needs to be viewed with caution. The client trading business, which contributes most of the GAAP revenue, has an actual gross margin of only about 0.3%, with revenue from this segment reaching $58.88 million in the first half of 2025, compared to just $500,000 in the same period last year. Staking revenue is considered zero as it is a pass-through income. The only segment that could reflect growth potential, subscription and service revenue, has shown a significant decline, with revenue of $136.8 million in 2023, dropping to $71.7 million in 2024; the first half of 2025 saw revenue of $40.1 million, 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 in October last year, investment banks indicated that BitGo's IPO valuation was expected to be between $2.75 billion and $3 billion, planning to raise about $300 million, but declining market interest led to a reduction in the fundraising target to about $200 million.

However, Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, is optimistic about BitGo's upside potential. He stated that BitGo is the first publicly traded company to provide pure cryptocurrency custody services and is one of the few publicly traded cryptocurrency companies expected to see revenue growth exceeding 50% in 2025. Thanks to the growth of tokenization business and the institutionalization of digital assets, as well as a relaxed regulatory environment, BitGo, as a high-quality custodian service provider with zero hacking incidents, has significant upside potential.

Furthermore, BitGo has demonstrated strong operational momentum. According to Matthew Sigel's predictions, BitGo is expected to maintain a 26% revenue growth rate before 2028, achieving over $400 million in revenue and more than $120 million in EBITDA, with a corresponding reasonable market value expected to exceed $3 billion.

BitGo has sounded the bell for cryptocurrency institutions going public this year, and many other cryptocurrency institutions are waiting to go public, with industry giants like Kraken, ConsenSys, Ledger, Animoca Brands, Upbit, and Bithumb planning or having already submitted applications.

Although the market is somewhat subdued, the cryptocurrency bell on Wall Street is destined to ring continuously this year.

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