Author: Nancy, PANews

"This morning, we took over Wall Street; tonight, we've taken over the skies." On January 22, crypto custody giant BitGo officially went public, firing the first shot in the 2026 crypto IPO race.

To commemorate this milestone, BitGo donated a framed copy of the Bitcoin white paper to the NYSE, which was displayed on the wall of the trading floor. That same night, a spectacular light show featuring the BitGo logo took place over Manhattan, New York.

Successfully IPO after four months; institutional investors' returns are currently limited.

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

Looking at its performance on its first day of trading on January 22, BitGo's stock price surged by approximately 35%, reaching a peak market capitalization of over $2.8 billion before giving back some of those gains. The following day, BitGo fell below its IPO price, closing at $14.50. Among crypto companies that have gone public in the past year, this valuation is not considered particularly high.

Meanwhile, as a crypto-native company, BitGo also introduced the innovative concept of tokenization after its IPO, tokenizing its shares through a partnership with Ondo Global Markets, allowing investors to trade them on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.

In fact, as early as February of last year, news broke that BitGo was considering an IPO. Subsequently, in September, it filed for an IPO with the U.S. SEC, planning to issue 11.8 million shares at a price range of $15 to $17 per share, raising up to approximately $200 million. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup served as joint lead underwriters. Ultimately, BitGo set the offering price at $18 per share, higher than the previously recommended range, raising approximately $213 million.

According to sources familiar with the matter, BitGO's IPO was oversubscribed several times, with YZi Labs, for example, announcing its participation as a strategic investor. Based on the current market capitalization, the returns for these investors are currently limited.

Regarding the shareholding structure, after the IPO, BitGo founder and CEO Mike Belshe will retain control of the company, holding approximately 56% of the voting rights; Valor Equity Partners and Redpoint Ventures will 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 increase its investment thereafter; Valor Equity Partners led a Series B funding round of approximately $42.5 million in 2017, and its founder Antonio Gracias (a board member of Tesla and SpaceX) is also a board member of BitGo.

In addition to these, BitGo's investors include Craft Ventures, founded by David Sacks, the first "AI and cryptocurrency czar" in the US, Goldman Sachs, Galaxy Digital, DRW, and many other institutions. However, since most of the funding rounds did not disclose specific valuations, the returns for these institutions are difficult to estimate. In 2023 alone, when BitGo completed its $100 million Series C funding round, its valuation was approximately $1.75 billion, which, compared to its current market capitalization, does not represent a significant premium.

Billions in revenue have been criticized as "showing off financial skills."

BitGo, established for over a decade, can be considered the pioneer of the crypto hosting business.

Back in 2013, Mike Belshe, a former early member of the Google Chrome team and one of the main contributors to the HTTP/2 specification, co-founded BitGo. From 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 of 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 market, becoming one of the earliest crypto companies to provide regulated and 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 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 strategy.

It's worth noting that Galaxy Digital had planned to acquire BitGo for $1.2 billion, a deal that was once the largest merger and acquisition in the crypto industry. However, due to the failure to meet closing conditions, Galaxy Digital unilaterally terminated the agreement, leading to a lawsuit between the two parties. BitGo sought $100 million in damages, but the court ultimately ruled in favor of Galaxy Digital, and the deal fell through.

To date, BitGo manages over $82 billion in assets and serves more than 5,100 institutional clients in over 100 countries, including hedge funds, exchanges, mining companies, and traditional financial institutions.

BitGo's continued business expansion has driven rapid revenue growth, making it one of the few crypto companies capable of maintaining stable profitability. According to its prospectus, BitGo achieved revenue of approximately $10 billion in the first nine months of 2025, a significant increase from $1.9 billion in the same period of 2024. This growth primarily stemmed from the development of businesses such as digital asset sales, staking, subscription fees, settlement services, and high-frequency trading. However, despite the substantial revenue, net profit was extremely low. Net profit for the first three quarters of last year was approximately $35.3 million, an increase from $5.1 million in the same period of 2024, but representing only about 0.35% of total revenue.

Behind the rapid growth in numbers is BitGo's transformation from a simple custodian to a broker. As a broker, the amount of money traded on behalf of clients can be counted as revenue, while the actual profit comes only from the transaction fees paid by clients.

In response, Dovey Wan, founding partner of Primitive Ventures, pointed out that BitGo is not a high-quality target in terms of revenue quality and growth structure. Almost all of its disclosed core revenue is GAAP rev (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles Revenue), meaning its actual revenue is pitifully small.

She stated that in terms of actual revenue performance, it was $146.4 million in 2023, decreased to $131.9 million in 2024, and reached $100.5 million in the first half of 2025. Considering that figures are often inflated before an IPO, this data still needs to be discounted. The managed account business, which contributed the majority of GAAP revenue, had an actual gross margin of only about 0.3%. In the first half of 2025, this segment generated $58.8 million in revenue, compared to only $500,000 in the same period last year. Staking revenue is transaction-based and can be considered zero. The only segment with growth potential, subscription and services, actually saw a significant decline. Revenue from this segment was $136.8 million in 2023, decreased to $71.7 million in 2024, and reached $40.1 million in the first half of 2025, only a slight increase from $38.3 million in the same period last year. Furthermore, BitGo's lending ledger risk is highly concentrated, with the top three clients accounting for over 50%.

Dovey also revealed that in October last year, investment banks had suggested that BitGo's IPO valuation was expected to be between $2.75 billion and $3 billion, with a planned fundraising of about $300 million. However, due to decreased market interest, the fundraising target was lowered 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 offer pure crypto custody services to investors and one of the few publicly traded crypto companies expected to achieve revenue growth exceeding 50% by 2025. Benefiting from the growth of tokenization and the institutionalization of digital assets, as well as a relaxed regulatory environment, BitGo, as a high-quality custody service provider with zero hacking incidents, possesses significant upside potential.

Furthermore, BitGo has demonstrated strong operational momentum. According to Matthew Sigel's forecast, BitGo is expected to maintain 26% revenue growth by 2028, achieving over $400 million in revenue and over $120 million in EBITDA, corresponding to a reasonable market capitalization of over $3 billion.

BitGo rang the bell for crypto firms to go public this year, and many other crypto firms are waiting to go public, including industry giants such as Kraken, ConsenSys, Ledger, Animoca Brands, Upbit, and Bithumb, all of which have either planned to go public or have already submitted applications.

Although the market is somewhat lackluster, the crypto bells on Wall Street are destined to ring continuously this year.

YZi Labs has made a strategic investment in BitGo's IPO.

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