Xapo sells Institutional Custody Business to Coinbase, giving focus to Consumer Business
Today, we are announcing the sale of our Institutional Custody Business to Coinbase. For Xapo, this transaction means greater focus on our Consumer Business and a big step towards our mission to build a safe and global way to use money.
At Xapo, we’re firm believers that no matter who you are or where you’re from, you deserve safe and easy access to digital financial services. This conviction led us to create a simple-to-use bitcoin wallet and an industry-leading bitcoin storage platform.
Since 2014, we’ve been safeguarding the funds of more than 1.5 million customers around the world. We’ve also helped our users create new businesses, buy their first cars, make their first investment and send money internationally to their loved ones, without the limitations of traditional financial services.
We want to extend this freedom and security to more people around the world. That’s why we’re working hard on developing new products so you can safely store, send and receive your money, wherever you are.
In order to achieve this we have to strengthen our commitment to our Consumer Business, and that limits our ability to build additional features for our Institutional Custody Business.
Today, we don’t charge our clients anything to hold their coins in custody and service them. It is getting expensive to support this business, especially the insurance and minimum capital requirement. However, without providing additional features and service, we felt it wouldn’t be fair to start charging our clients a fee.
Our quest to find the best solution — the best possible caretaker of the assets — and to make it a seamless transition for our Institutional Custody clients led us to have conversations with several top institutional custody providers.
We believe that in choosing Coinbase, the Institutional Custody Business is going to a company that can provide great insurance, borrowing and investment alternatives that we are not offering.
Coinbase has top notch security and they are fully insured. They are a qualified custodian and a NY Limited Purpose Trust Company. They are a fiduciary under NY Banking Law and all assets are held in trust for the benefit of their clients. Additionally, they have a pipeline to offer wide financial services for large holders.
We strongly believe that Coinbase will take this chance to show our Institutional clients that they deserve their business.
It has been our pleasure serving our Institutional Custody clients, but we believe that the sale is the best path towards our vision, digital money for everyone.
To position ourselves for this focus, over the last few years we’ve invested heavily in building a world class team and culture. Our team promise “Impact Globally, Work Remotely” helps us attract the best talent from across the globe, and reminds us daily of our potential to advance the lives of billions. Today, we have more than 250 team members distributed across 50 countries. At Xapo, remote work is not a perk, it is in our DNA.
Moving forward, we continue to develop our Gibraltar-based digital multi-currency wallet and card that will operate in the global market, and strengthen our Consumer Business.
