BitGo Holdings and 21Shares said on Thursday that they have expanded their existing partnership to include custody and staking services supporting 21Shares’ cryptocurrency products (ETPs) for investors in the United States and Europe.
Under the agreement, BitGo will provide qualified custody, trading and execution services and integrated staking infrastructure to 21Shares U.S. exchange-traded funds and global ETPs. The agreement also provides 21Shares with access to liquidity in electronic and over-the-counter markets, according to announcement.
BitGo says the services will be provided through regulated entities in the US and Europe, including a federal custodian bank approved by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and MiCA-licensed operations authorized by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.
FalconX subsidiary 21Shares is one of the largest cryptocurrency ETF issuers in the world, with 59 exchange-traded products listed on 13 exchanges and more than $5.4 billion in assets under management as of Feb. 11, according to its website.
The move comes less than a month after BitGo, a digital asset infrastructure company based in Palo Alto, California, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BTGO.
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Staking goes deeper into regulated products
In recent months, institutional custody platforms have increasingly incorporated staking services into their core offerings as investor demand for yield-generating crypto infrastructure grows.
In October, Coinbase expanded its integration with staking infrastructure provider Figment, allowing Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Custody customers to stake Avalanche (AVAX), Aptos (APT), Sui (SUI), and Solana (SOL) directly from Coinbase depository.
About a month later, Anchorage Digital partnered with Figment to add staking for Hyperliquid (HYPE), offering the service through Anchorage Digital Bank and its company in Singapore, with access also available via self-service wallet in Porto.
On February 9, Ripple said it has expanded its institutional custody platform through integration with Securosys and Figment, adding support for hardware security modules that allows banks and custodians to offer cryptocurrency custody and staking services without having to run their own validator or key management infrastructure.
There is also growing institutional interest in liquid staking, which allows investors to earn proof of stake rewards while receiving a tradable token that keeps their underlying assets liquid.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong-based custodian Hex Trust announced that it did started cooperation with the Jito Foundation integrate JitoSOL, a liquid staking token on the Solana blockchain, enabling customers to earn staking rewards and MEV while maintaining SOL liquidity and being eligible for operate as collateral for borrowing and lending through the marketplace.
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