Bitcoin Magazine

Crypto Firm BitGo Eyes Near $2 Billion Valuation in US IPO

Crypto custody firm BitGo has launched its initial public offering, seeking to raise up to $201 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Palo Alto, California-based company is offering roughly 11.8 million shares of Class A common stock at an expected price range of $15 to $17 per share.

The offering includes 11 million shares sold by BitGo and about 821,600 shares offered by existing stockholders, with the company not receiving proceeds from those secondary sales. Underwriters will also have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1.77 million shares.

Founded in 2013, BitGo is one of the largest crypto custody providers in the U.S., offering secure storage and infrastructure services for digital assets as institutional participation in crypto continues to expand.

The company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BTGO. Goldman Sachs is serving as lead book-running manager, with Citigroup and several other banks participating in the offering.

Bitgo receives nod from OCC

In December, Bitgo was one of five digital asset firms to receive conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to become a federally chartered national trust bank, alongside Ripple, Circle, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos. 

The decision marked a significant step in bringing major crypto companies further into the U.S. federal banking system.

The conditional approvals allow the firms to convert from state-level trust charters to national trust bank status, pending the fulfillment of OCC requirements. Once finalized, the companies will join roughly 60 existing national trust banks overseen by the OCC, enabling them to offer fiduciary and custody services nationwide. 

Unlike full-service national banks, trust banks cannot take deposits or issue loans, but they can safeguard and manage customer assets, including digital assets.

BitGo’s IPO adds to the growing wave of crypto companies testing the public markets, but it stands apart from the usual exchange-led listings. Instead of relying on trading activity, BitGo makes its money by providing custody, compliance, and infrastructure services tied to safeguarding digital assets.

That difference could resonate with regulators and investors who have grown more cautious about trading-driven crypto businesses.

As attention shifts toward firms focused on compliance, settlement, and asset protection, BitGo’s debut fits a broader narrative gaining momentum in U.S. markets.

This post Crypto Firm BitGo Eyes Near $2 Billion Valuation in US IPO first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Pardoning the Samourai Developers Would Restore Legal Clarity and Protect Non-Custodial Code

The Samourai Wallet matter raises a fundamental question about how the United States treats non-custodial software and the developers who create it. Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill did not operate a financial service or handle customer assets. They wrote and maintained software that allowed users to construct collaborative Bitcoin transactions in a privacy-preserving way. Throughout the tool’s entire lifecycle, users controlled their own keys, initiated their own transactions, and never relied on Samourai or its developers to transmit or safeguard value. The distinction between a custodial service and a non-custodial tool is not a technicality; it is the core boundary that the Bank Secrecy Act, FinCEN guidance, and decades of regulatory practice use to distinguish software authors from regulated financial intermediaries.

This point was reinforced by FinCEN itself. In an internal analysis, the agency concluded that Samourai’s architecture did not constitute money transmission because no third party took possession or control of user funds. That conclusion was never disclosed to the defense while the prosecution advanced a theory that required the opposite: that building software which users employ for privacy is functionally equivalent to operating a financial institution. When that analysis finally surfaced, it confirmed what has long been understood across the industry and within the regulatory community—that non-custodial tools fall outside the BSA’s money-transmitter framework because there is no transfer of value by a third party. The case ultimately treated the developers as if they were responsible for the independent actions of users, even though they had no role in executing, intermediating, or approving any transaction. Some individuals did misuse the tool, as happens with any privacy or security technology, but the law has never equated misuse with liability for the creators. We do not treat the authors of encryption libraries, VPN protocols, or email clients as participants in unlawful activity simply because bad actors rely on those tools. Collapsing the distinction between developing a tool and operating a service would introduce an untenable level of risk for anyone building privacy-enhancing or security-critical software.

There is also an important speech component. Courts have consistently recognized that code is expressive, and publishing open-source software is an act of communication. When publication is treated as evidence of “operation,” the legal boundary between authorship and conduct becomes blurred in a way that threatens a wide range of legitimate technologies. Any precedent suggesting that developers are responsible for unforeseeable downstream use would have immediate consequences for cryptography, cybersecurity research, and open-source work more broadly.

Rodriguez and Hill ultimately accepted plea agreements in the face of substantial sentencing exposure, even though government records undermined the central regulatory theory of the case. Their convictions now rest on a framework that is at odds with established guidance and with the direction in which federal policy has since moved. A pardon would bring the legal outcome back into alignment with the underlying facts: this was software development, not money transmission, and the individuals involved should not bear criminal liability for writing code that users executed independently.

This case has already had a measurable chilling effect on developers working on privacy and security tools in the United States. Leaving the convictions in place would discourage responsible innovation and push critical work to jurisdictions that do not share our commitment to open research and transparent development. A pardon would correct a clear misapplication of federal law, protect the integrity of long-standing distinctions in financial regulation, and reaffirm that publishing non-custodial software is not—and should not become—a criminal act.

Disclaimer – This is a guest contribution by Zack Shapiro, originally published by the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI). The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post Pardoning the Samourai Developers Would Restore Legal Clarity and Protect Non-Custodial Code first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Zack Shapiro.