Digital asset infrastructure provider BitGo has launched a financing platform that lets institutional clients borrow and lend against liquid, staked and locked assets within a single custody account.
The company said the system consolidates borrowing, lending and collateral management into one workflow, reducing reliance on processes that typically require multiple counterparties and manual asset transfers.
By introducing portfolio-based lending, BitGo allows clients to borrow against a mix of assets held in custody rather than posting collateral on a per-loan basis.
Adam Sporn, head of prime brokerage and institutional sales at BitGo, told Cointelegraph the platform reflects growing institutional use of crypto-backed financing.
“We want to give institutions the ability to decide how, when and where they want to use assets and maximize capital efficiency,” he said, adding that the update expands BitGo’s existing financing services to support a broader range of collateral.
It also supports loans backed by staked and locked tokens (such as staked or vesting positions), which BitGo says will allow institutions to use those positions as collateral without unwinding them, while maintaining visibility and control over assets held in custody.
Institutional clients can also lend eligible assets through the platform, using the same account to deploy capital for yield or access liquidity for trading and treasury needs.
Crypto-backed lending carries risks, including collateral liquidation during market volatility and counterparty exposure depending on platform structure.
Financing activity is handled within BitGo’s custody environment, with collateral held in segregated wallets and credit extended against assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and stablecoins. Funds accessed through the platform can be used for trading via BitGo’s brokerage services or for broader liquidity and capital management needs.
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Bitcoin lending grows across exchanges, DeFi and institutional markets
Bitcoin-backed lending has grown across the digital asset market over the past year, with exchanges, DeFi protocols and institutional entities increasingly offering credit against crypto holdings.
In November, Mezo and Anchorage Digital began to offer institutional clients Bitcoin-backed stablecoin loans and short-term yield strategies, enabling borrowing against BTC held in custody while earning tokenized rewards through locked positions.
Exchanges are also expanding into crypto-backed lending. In January, Coinbase relaunched its Bitcoin-backed lending product in the United States after a 16-month halt, allowing users to borrow up to $100,000 in USDC against BTC via Morpho on its Base network.
In February, Kraken introduced Flexline, a crypto-backed loan product offering fixed terms from two days to two years for advanced users.
At the institutional level, infrastructure is evolving toward custody-integrated models. In March, Lombard and Bitwise Asset Management said they would develop systems allowing institutions to earn yield and borrow against Bitcoin held in custody, without moving the underlying assets.
Parallel efforts are expanding Bitcoin’s role in financial applications. Babylon Labs recently integrated with Ledger to enable BTC to be locked into programmable vaults while remaining in self-custody, a structure that could support lending and yield strategies.
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