Leading crypto financial service, BitGo announced on Tuesday that it is acquiring digital securities platform Harbor and all of its broker-dealer and transfer agent subsidiaries. The announcement came via a tweet on Tuesday evening, where the company said that the acquisition will help extend its capabilities to address a wider class of institutional investors.
BitGo is acquiring Harbor! This acquisition extends BitGo’s capabilities to address a wider class of #digitalassets for institutional investors. https://t.co/76zr6VRH4G @harbor @mikebelshe #Institutionalinvestors pic.twitter.com/tGNssX0y1P
— BitGo (@BitGo) February 18, 2020
BitGo is one of the leading companies that focus on making crypto financial products and services accessible and feasible for institutional investors, an area which it considers to be largely underserved. In an official press release on its website, BitGo stated that the acquisition will also aid in laying down a foundation for full-stack digital asset solutions. Commenting on the deal, BitGo CEO, Mike Belshe said,
Advertisement
“Our vision has always been bigger than wallets and custody, and acquiring Harbor furthers BitGo’s vision of building a new digital infrastructure for financial services. We believe participants will ultimately need trusted, full-stack solutions for digital currencies and now BitGo is well-positioned to address institutional requirements as the market develops.”
The California based company, BitGo provides security, custodial, and liquidity solutions to the institutional investors, and the acquisition of Harbor will further strengthen its infrastructure.
Founded in 2018, Harbor, on the other hand, is a one-stop platform for security token issuers. IT was backed by high-profile names like Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, Fifth Wall, Valor Equity Partners, and VY Capital. Josh Stein, Harbor’s CEO said,
“BitGo has been an important partner since Harbor’s inception. We’ve worked closely together to integrate BitGo Business Wallets and BitGo Custody into Harbor’s services. Harbor provides BitGo with a complementary technology stack for the lifecycle of digital securities, as well as important service capabilities through our digital assets broker-dealer and transfer agent subsidiaries.”
Advertisement
Harbor became the first crypto-blockchain company to be granted both, a broker-dealer license and a transfer agent license, when it received the latter from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in November last year. Prior to the acquisition, BitGo has been regularly working with Harbor to provide solutions to its users.