Digital asset custody firm BitGo is making big moves again, with their announcement of a $600 million addition to their cold storage insurance program.
BitGo has added another level of security for clients, with the announcement of over a half-million dollars being added to their cold storage insurance. Last year, the digital asset custodian became the first to offer users the option to buy dedicated excess limits of $100 million.
With today’s announcement, they have ostensibly become head of the class in terms of the largest cold storage Specie program. BitGo is part of a group of companies to secure insurance for digital assets, as their CEO, Mike Belshe, pointed out:
“BitGo was one of the first service providers to build a strong insurance program for crypto. Today […] we’re able to offer a lower cost Dedicated Customer insurance program on top of BitGo’s secure cold storage system. This milestone demonstrates that the offering has been very popular with clients seeking the ultimate secure and insured storage.”
Unfortunately, bearer instruments, such as bitcoin (BTC), are vulnerable to theft or loss at any number of points during the transfer. Crypto insurance hedges against such losses.
BitGo plays a critical role for WBTC
The Palo Alto-based company plays a vital role as the sole custodian for the operations of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC).
Wrapped bitcoin is essentially an ERC-20 token with the value of one bitcoin. It enables the transfer of WBTC quicker than BTC and the integration into ETH wallets and smart contracts. It is the representation of bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain.
WBTC is a joint project by BitGo, Kyber Network, and Republic Protocol to enable new application use cases for BTC. The goal is to standardize bitcoins, according to ERC-20 and to serve as a 1:1 pegged coin.
Wrapped bitcoin is not the only venture that brings BTC into the ETH network. A similar project named imToken has also brought its ERC-20 token to market, titled imBTC, representing BTC. The permissionless nature of ERC-20 tokens allows them to be another cog in the wheel that is DeFi applications.
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