BitGo Says Crypto Client Demand Is Rising During Downturn

By Nathan Brooks

BitGo’s Asia-Pacific client base tripled after the company received a Major Payment Institution license in Singapore in August 2024, according to Pete Janney, BitGo’s head of global markets.

Janney said: “Client demand for crypto services is rising” even as a broader downturn weighed on digital-asset prices. He linked that sustained interest to “confidence in BitGo’s services,” framing the firm’s momentum as a measure of client trust rather than a forecast for digital-asset prices.

BitGo provides digital-asset custody to individual and institutional clients, and financial services to institutional clients. Its platform has also integrated NYDIG’s trading operations, adding trading capabilities for customers.

The integration connects trading capabilities with BitGo’s established service set. For institutional clients, that means custody, financial services and trading now sit within the same platform. The disclosure does not specify which customer segments can access trading, nor does it disclose customer totals, transaction volumes, pricing or revenue.

That makes the Singapore result the clearest scale indicator in the disclosed information. A tripled Asia-Pacific client base means the regional roster reached three times its prior level, equivalent to a 200% increase, after the August 2024 license. Without the underlying base, no reader can translate the figure into absolute clients or dollar value.

The chronology also places BitGo’s regional expansion alongside a difficult market backdrop. Licensing in August 2024 marked a milestone in the company’s Singapore expansion, and the subsequent client-base increase gives that effort a measurable outcome. Janney’s demand commentary supplies the second marker: clients continued seeking crypto services even while falling digital-asset prices weighed on the broader market.

What does this change for BitGo’s clients?

Practically, the change is the addition of trading to a platform that already centers on custody and, for institutional users, financial services. For clients, that means they can access a broader service set through BitGo at the point when the company says interest in those services is increasing.

For practitioners, the evidence points to two distinct drivers: regulated market access and confidence in service execution. The Singapore license supports the first; Janney’s assessment of client confidence supports the second. Neither driver establishes how much revenue the expansion produces, and the disclosed information provides no basis for calculating an earnings effect.

The integration changes market structure more immediately. By bringing NYDIG’s trading operations into its platform, BitGo adds trading capability alongside custody and, for institutional clients, financial services. For users, this matters because the provider they rely on to hold digital assets can also support trading activity, a broader operating proposition than custody alone.

The caution is that the disclosure measures interest, not commercial conversion. Rising demand can coexist with a weak market, as Janney described, but the announcement does not show whether clients increased balances, trade frequency or contract size. Any assessment of the financial impact would therefore go beyond the evidence provided.

The disclosed figures do not establish a numerical baseline for the Asia-Pacific client base or identify how many of those clients use trading. The tripling figure establishes relative growth, not the scale of active users, assets held or fee income. That distinction matters when comparing a regional client-count milestone with the broader task of converting licensed access into durable institutional relationships.

The next checkpoint is operational: whether BitGo can retain the expanded Asia-Pacific client base and convert NYDIG’s integrated trading capabilities into sustained usage as client demand continues to diverge from digital-asset price weakness.