Written by: Bootly

Cryptocurrency custodian institution BitGo ($BTGO) officially rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on January 22, Eastern Time.

This company, regarded as the "lifeblood" of crypto asset infrastructure, completed its IPO at $18 per share, opening at $22.43, and jumping approximately 25% on its first day, marking the beginning of the 2026 wave of crypto company listings.

Based on the IPO issuance price, BitGo is valued at approximately $2 billion. Although this figure is far lower than the nearly $7 billion valuation of stablecoin issuer Circle ($CRCL) last year, BitGo's performance as one of the first large crypto companies to go public this year is still considered solid.

A Decade in the Making: From Multi-Sig Pioneer to Institutional Gatekeeper

BitGo is the latest native crypto enterprise attempting to enter the public market after several crypto companies successfully went public in 2025.

Its story begins in 2013, during a time when the crypto world was still in its "wild west" phase, with frequent hacking incidents and private key management being a nightmare. Founders Mike Belshe and Ben Davenport keenly realized that if institutional investors were to enter the market, they needed not flashy trading software, but rather "security."

BitGo founder Mike Belshe

Standing on the NYSE bell-ringing platform, Mike Belshe might recall that afternoon over a decade ago.

As the 10th employee of the Google Chrome founding team and a pioneer of the modern web acceleration protocol HTTP/2, Mike was initially skeptical about cryptocurrency, even doubting it was a scam. But he disproved his doubts in the most "programmer" way: "I tried to hack Bitcoin, and I failed."

This failure instantly transformed him from a skeptic to a hardcore believer. To find a safer place for an old laptop filled with Bitcoin under his couch, he decided to dig a "trench" for this wild market himself.

Early BitGo's office resembled a laboratory. While contemporaries like Coinbase were busy acquiring customers and boosting retail trading volumes, Mike's team was researching the commercialization potential of multi-signature (Multi-sig) technology. Despite his close friendship with Netscape's founding moguls and a16z's head Ben Horowitz, he chose not to take the "venture capital fast track," but rather the slowest and most stable route.

In 2013, BitGo was the first to launch multi-signature (Multi-sig) wallet technology, which later became the industry standard. However, BitGo did not stop at selling software; it made a strategic choice to transition to a "licensed financial institution."

By obtaining trust licenses in South Dakota and New York, BitGo successfully transformed into a "qualified custodian." This identity played a stabilizing role during the crypto ETF waves in 2024 and 2025. When asset management giants like BlackRock launched Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, it was underlying service providers like BitGo that were responsible for safeguarding asset security and handling settlement processes.

Unlike exchanges like Coinbase, BitGo built a solid "institutional flywheel": first locking in assets (AUM) with extremely compliant custody, then deriving staking, clearing, and large brokerage services around these deposited assets.

This "infrastructure-first" logic allowed BitGo to demonstrate remarkable resilience amid market fluctuations. After all, regardless of whether the market is bullish or bearish, as long as the assets are still in the "safe," BitGo's business continues.

10x Price-to-Sales Ratio: Where Does the Confidence Come From?

Looking through BitGo's disclosed prospectus, its financial data appears quite "impressive."

Due to the requirements of U.S. GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), BitGo must account for the entire principal of transactions as revenue. This led to a staggering gross revenue of $10 billion from "digital asset sales" in the first three quarters of 2025. However, in the eyes of mature investors, these numbers are merely "pass-through money" and do not reflect true profitability.

What truly supports its $2 billion valuation is the "subscriptions and services" business segment.

According to chart data from Blockworks Research, BitGo's core economic revenue (excluding pass-through fees and costs) is expected to be approximately $195.9 million in fiscal year 2025. Among this, the subscription business contributed the vast majority of high-margin recurring revenue, with $80 million contributing nearly 48% of total net income. This revenue primarily comes from recurring fees charged by BitGo to over 4,900 institutional clients.

Additionally, the staking business has become an unexpected growth point. Staking revenue reached $39 million, ranking second. This reflects that BitGo is no longer just a simple "safe," but is significantly improving capital efficiency by providing value-added returns based on custodial assets.

Looking at the trading and stablecoin business, although trading volume accounts for the highest proportion of total revenue, it only contributes $35 million to adjusted net income.

The newly launched "Stablecoin-as-a-Service" contributed $14 million, and although it is still in its early stages, it has already shown some market penetration.

To see BitGo's true valuation, one must adjust its paper financial metrics. If calculated solely based on its approximately $16 billion GAAP revenue, its valuation appears extremely low (price-to-sales ratio of about 0.1x). However, if we exclude non-core items such as pass-through trading costs, staking shares, and payments from stablecoin issuers, its core business has a deep moat:

• Estimated core economic revenue for fiscal year 2025: approximately $195.9 million

• Implied valuation multiple: enterprise value/core revenue ≈ 10x

This 10x valuation multiple places it above wallet peers primarily focused on retail business, with the premium reflecting its regulatory moat as a "qualified custodian." In simple terms, at a valuation level of $1.96 billion, the market is willing to pay a premium for the subscription business, while the low-margin trading and staking businesses are merely icing on the cake.

Matthew Sigel, research director at VanEck, believes that compared to the vast majority of crypto tokens with market capitalizations exceeding $2 billion that have never generated net profits, BitGo's equity is a more tangible asset. The essence of this business is "selling shovels"; regardless of whether the market is bullish or bearish, as long as institutions are still trading, ETFs are still operating, and assets need to be stored, it can continue to earn fees. This model may not shine as brightly as some altcoins in a bull market, but in a volatile or bear market, it is a "stable job."

More symbolically, its listing method itself is noteworthy. Unlike other crypto companies' IPOs, BitGo adopted a more "crypto-native" approach: by collaborating with Ondo Finance, it synchronized its shares on-chain on the first day of listing.

The tokenized BTGO shares will circulate on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, allowing global investors to almost instantly access this newly listed custodian. The tokenized BTGO stock may serve as collateral in the future, directly participating in DeFi lending protocols, bridging TradFi (traditional finance) and DeFi channels.

Conclusion

Image source: PitchBook

Looking back at the recently concluded 2025, the transaction volume of crypto venture capital (VC) surged to $19.7 billion. As PwC IPO expert Mike Bellin stated, 2025 completed the "professional transformation" of cryptocurrency, and 2026 will be a year of complete liquidity explosion.

Following pioneers like Bullish, Circle, and Gemini successfully going public in 2025, crypto company listings have shown dual characteristics of "infrastructure" and "giantization." Currently, Kraken has submitted a confidential application to the SEC, aiming for the largest crypto exchange IPO of the year; Consensys is closely collaborating with JPMorgan to seek capital discourse power in the Ethereum ecosystem; and Ledger is also anchoring itself to the New York Stock Exchange amid the surge in self-custody demand.

Of course, the market has never escaped the fluctuations of the macro environment, and the memories of some companies' IPOs breaking below their offering prices in 2025 are still fresh. But this precisely indicates that the industry is maturing; capital is no longer buying every good story but is beginning to scrutinize financial health, compliance frameworks, and sustainable business models.

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