BitGo has launched a new financing platform that enables institutional clients to borrow and lend against liquid, staked and locked assets held in a single custody account. The service combines borrowing, lending and collateral management into one workflow, removing the need for multiple counterparties and manual transfers between accounts.
A key feature is portfolio-based lending: institutions can pledge a mix of assets in custody as aggregate collateral instead of assigning collateral on a loan-by-loan basis. Adam Sporn, BitGo’s head of prime brokerage and institutional sales, said the product responds to rising institutional demand for crypto-backed financing and is designed to give clients flexibility in how they deploy assets to improve capital efficiency. The update broadens BitGo’s existing financing capabilities to accept a wider range of collateral types.
The platform supports loans backed by staked and locked tokens—such as staked positions or vesting schedules—so institutions can use those holdings as collateral without unwinding them, while retaining custody visibility and control. Eligible assets can also be lent through the same account, allowing institutions to deploy capital for yield or access liquidity for trading and treasury operations.
The company notes that crypto-backed lending carries inherent risks, including the potential for collateral liquidation during market stress and varying degrees of counterparty exposure depending on the financing structure. BitGo handles financing within its custody environment, holding collateral in segregated wallets and extending credit against assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and stablecoins. Funds drawn from the platform can be used with BitGo’s brokerage services or for broader liquidity and capital management needs.
The launch comes amid broader growth in crypto-backed lending across exchanges, DeFi and institutional channels. Over the past year, firms such as Mezo and Anchorage Digital introduced institutional Bitcoin-backed stablecoin loans and short-term yield products that let clients borrow against BTC in custody while collecting tokenized rewards from locked positions. Exchanges have also re-entered lending: Coinbase relaunched a U.S. Bitcoin-backed lending product allowing USDC loans against BTC via Morpho on Base, and Kraken released Flexline, a crypto-backed lending option with fixed terms aimed at advanced users.
At the institutional level, infrastructure is moving toward custody-integrated financing models. Firms including Lombard and Bitwise Asset Management are working on solutions that let institutions earn yield and borrow against Bitcoin without transferring underlying assets out of custody. In a related development, Babylon Labs partnered with Ledger to allow BTC to be locked into programmable vaults while remaining in self-custody—configurations that could support lending and yield strategies.
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