BitGo, a custody company for bitcoin and blockchain assets announced today that its clients can now deposit fiat for custodianship. Holding fiat allows institutional clients to buy and sell digital currencies directly from their BitGo Trust account.
Combining fiat with storage of crypto puts control back in the hands of traders; no more waiting for wire transfers to complete or needing to move bitcoin between cold storage and a trading account. The company introduced custody for fiat with the launch of BitGo’s trading integration platform where clients can access deep liquidity via its network of trading partners. Last week, BitGo announced that Genesis Global Trading is their first partner, with more to be announced.
Benefits
For liquidity providers who are not regulated to hold fiat or digital currencies, easy access to fiat reduces trade settlement time. Without a fiat account, traders must transfer money each and every time they want to execute a buy order. This process is both time-consuming and cumbersome, relying on external parties for wire transfers as well as the transfer of assets between accounts. More importantly, a delay in getting coins to market can cause market risk in price fluctuations.
All cash deposits (USD only) are done through a wire transfer. Once the wire is received and validated, the cash balance is updated in the USD wallet in the BitGo application. Clients enter their bank wiring info directly in the BitGo app (or API) for Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and AML purposes, enabling BitGo Trust to validate the wire when received.
