Ricardo Esteves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the Financial Services Industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011. He holds a degree in Business Administration and has experience producing real-time news, from both buy-side and sell-side, as well as for retail traders, brokers and service providers. Esteves' work has appeared in a variety of online publications including FX Street and FinanceFeeds.
Crypto custody specialist BitGo has acquired digital securities platform Harbor, including its broker-dealer and transfer agent subsidiaries, extending BitGo’s capabilities and laying the foundation for a full-stack digital assets solution.
The acquisition of Harbor follows BitGo’s acquisition of Hedge, a leader in the scalable, programmatic deployment of staking infrastructure, which formed the foundation of BitGo Staking.
Mike Belshe, Chie Executive Officer at BitGo, said: “Our vision has always been bigger than wallets and custody and acquiring Harbor furthers BitGo’s vision of building a new digital infrastructure for financial services. We believe participants will ultimately need trusted, full-stack solutions for digital currencies and now BitGo is well-positioned to address institutional requirements as the market develops.”
Josh Stein, Chief Executive Officer at Harbor, commented: “BitGo has been an important partner since Harbor inception. We’ve worked closely together to integrate BitGo Business Wallets and BitGo Custody into Harbor’s services. Harbor provides BitGo with
Mike Belshe, Chief Executive Officer of BitGo
a complementary technology stack for the lifecycle of digital securities, as well as important service capabilities through our digital assets broker-dealer and transfer agent subsidiaries.”
Founded in 2017 with the goal of becoming the one-stop-shop platform for security token issuers, Harbor received investments from top names in the industry including Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, Fifth Wall, Valor Equity Partners, and VY Capital.
The firm became a registered transfer agent with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in late 2019. It was the first blockchain company to be both a FINRA-registered broker-dealer and a SEC-registered transfer agent for digital assets.
Brad Greiwe, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Fifth Wall, said: “BitGo and Harbor have worked together on their shared commitment to build the digital asset infrastructure that traditional institutional investors need. The digital assets market needs trusted solutions and services which makes this acquisition both a perfect fit and a natural next step.”
BitGo provides custody and liquidity solutions for institutional clients and processes over 20% of all global bitcoin transactions, also supporting over 200 coins and tokens. The firm launched BitGo Trust Company in 2018, a custodian purpose-built for storing digital assets.
The firm has recently appointed Andres Cifuentes to the role of Executive Director of Institutional Sales based out of the New York office. The industry veteran had served under Bats Global Markets, a USA based multinational stock and forex trading marketplace provider for nearly four years. Bats was acquired and rebranded by Cboe.
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