Published: Thursday, January 22, 2026 · 4:26 PM | Updated: Thursday, January 22, 2026 · 4:26 PM
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00:00 Speaker A
And joining me now is Mike Belshe, Bitgo co-founder and CEO. Thanks for being here, Mike.
00:08 Mike Belshe
Hey, thanks for having me.
00:09 Speaker A
So, um, talk to me about the timing of this IPO. You guys first out of the gate this year at a time when crypto prices are not doing a heck of a lot. The record of the companies that went public in your space last year kind of mixed here. So how did you guys think about when you wanted to come public?
00:32 Mike Belshe
Well, look, I think everybody that’s in digital asset space is here for the long term. Um, so you know, kind of the the ups and downs of the where the market is is is a little bit less relevant to us. Uh we actually started this process, you know, uh last fall. Uh we thought we were going to kind of get out onto the markets around October, but the government decided to take a little holiday and so we ended up delayed out until January. But look, I think it’s a good time. Uh, we’ve got a lot of business to be done. Uh, the fact that we’re a public company now, uh is bringing so many more potential clients to us. I mean, really, I think the last year with the regulatory changes, our our total addressable market doubled and then I think with this change, actually our TAM just doubled again.
01:21 Speaker A
So, the TAM may have may be higher, but there’s also a lot of people in this in this game if you will. You guys offer custody among other uh services. Coinbase offers custody, Fidelity Digital Assets offers custody, Gemini offers custody. You know, there there are a lot of players out there. So, what what is your pitch to investors about what your competitive moat is in that area?
01:54 Mike Belshe
Well, look, if there’s one thing I can dispel right here, it’s like, look, we’re we’re not a custodian. It’s not like we had some grand plan to become just a custodian and that was the end game. No, no, no. It’s a means to an end. We build uh infrastructure is what we do. And we build it at the highest compliance and security levels that anyone can ask for. So, we’re a brand you haven’t heard of as much. We’re kind of a brand behind the brand, so to speak. And that’s because we focused on institutional demands. Now, by the way, we believe everybody on the planet, whether you’re retail, whether you’re institutional, deserves to have the same level of protection. You deserve to have a fiduciary that’s overseeing your money, and we make sure that that happens. You get it with your bank, you get it with your stock broker. If you’ve got an RAA protecting your investments, all of those guys are fiduciaries. You come to us, you open up your account, you get a fiduciary account. Institutional uh institutions out there demand this, and so we’ve always been providing it. We’re just continuing to expand that. How we make our money is actually on the services on top. and that includes trading, that includes staking, borrowing, lending services, collateral management. And then we also offer this thing called the Go network, which is a settlement network which operates not just here in the United States, but across our seven custodians that we have globally. So we’ve got a really large footprint uh not just here but also abroad. We connect that all together so that people can do digital assets everywhere.
03:22 Speaker A
And Mike, how closely is your revenue tied to the the amount of assets uh on the platform? So in other words, if the price of crypto goes down and the value of the assets goes down, does that mean you’re making less?
03:41 Mike Belshe
Uh yeah, look, I mean, some of our products are certainly correlated to the price of Bitcoin and digital assets. I mean, there’s no denying that. But look, it’s our job to build a business that hopefully uh is more resilient than just based on that price. So look, I’d like to have the numbers speak for themselves. Go check what we did in Q3, check Q4. Um it’s all in the S1, you can analyze it yourself. I think in general, coming into the market right now, most people looked at Q4 last year, they said, hey, uh you know, it was kind of a rough rough time for the tech sector, even a tougher time for the crypto sector. But I think if you look at Bico’s performance, I think it speaks for itself and it’s outperforming.
04:26 Speaker A
Um well, if you if you look at the numbers for you guys, the 12 months ended September 2025, I think you guys had 164.7 or so million dollars in net income, but that was lumpy if you will, right? You saw a a draw a a drop in the first half of 2025. Um and I know you guys have been investing to build, you’re going to invest in the proceeds from this IPO to build. How exactly are you investing them and then when do you expect to get to a more sort of sustainable profitability path?
05:07 Mike Belshe
Well, like, I think it’s sustainable now, but look, we’re a growth company. So look around what’s going on with digital assets. Like what we just saw last year, the number of regulated firms that can now touch digital assets that couldn’t before. Look at the announcements that are coming out in the market every day, whether it’s the New York Stock Exchange’s announcement this week, whether you’re talking about companies moving to 24/7. All of these guys need digital. And as they move into the digital realm, they’ve got two options, right? Either they build it completely from scratch. And these are digital assets, right? So they are very different than anything we’ve ever seen before. Folks need help. So often times they come and they turn around and they partner with us. Um so, look, I know you can get sensitive about the price of Bitcoin being like the total barometer for how our company, our industry works, but as the broad, as the base grows broader, uh that changes. Uh look, we are going to run this company uh responsibly. One last thing, I mean, you know, Bico’s been around for 12 years, 13 years and we’ve raised the least money of kind of anybody in the space. We raised about $200 million total. Um and we’re profitable to this day. So we think the business works. I think also what you see in Q4 is that the EBIDA can start to creep up. So it is a business that will scale. But for right now, we’re investing in growth in uh locally and abroad and across multiple product lines.
06:44 Speaker A
Mike, something I’m really curious about. Um you control the majority of the voting power of the shares here, more than half, 55 and a half percent. Um you own less than 8% of the economic interest. and that’s not necessarily on the face of it unusual. We see those kinds of patterns in Silicon Valley. It’s just more extreme than we usually see in terms of the gap. So, you’re effectively saying that to potential shareholders here, trust me. Why why should they trust you? What are you telling them?
07:23 Mike Belshe
Well, look at my my history, look at my pedigree. Uh look, um I think actually it’s going to give a more consistent stewardship for the company. Obviously, the board of directors agrees as well. It’s not just my decision that that went into that. Um a little bit about me, you know, I’m not uh actually from Wall Street even though here I’m uh at the New York Stock Exchange today. I I come from 30 years of background in technology. started my career at Packard, was at Netscape before that was a household name, did a number of startups. Um we are here to build and innovate. We build infrastructure. We’re a brand behind the brands. We have to work with the utmost of brands. The fact that they’re working with us today means that they’ve done their diligence and hopefully that signals the right thing. Um obviously my job, still deliver great value to shareholders.
08:24 Speaker A
Mike, thanks a lot for joining us. Appreciate it.
08:28 Mike Belshe
Hey, thank you for having me. Thank you.
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