PALO ALTO, CA | Zug, Switzerland: BitGo, the leader in digital asset financial services, today announced a partnership with the NEAR Foundation, the world’s fastest growing, carbon neutral, open source blockchain, which enables developers to easily build, test, and deploy applications. The partnership makes BitGo the first qualified custodian to support the protocol and its assets, including its native token, NEAR. 

Through this partnership, institutions holding NEAR tokens will now be able to custody and stake these tokens via hot wallets and Qualified Custody wallets on BitGo’s platform. BitGo and the NEAR Foundation (the “Foundation”), which supports the NEAR protocol ecosystem through its financial and operational resources, also announced today that the Foundation will custody its own treasury with BitGo and stake part of this treasury using BitGo’s hot and Qualified Custody wallets, further extending this unique partnership.

“BitGo is excited to become the first qualified custodian to provide services to the entire NEAR Protocol ecosystem, including holders of the NEAR token who have been searching for a secure way to store and stake their assets,” said Nuri Chang, Vice President of Product. “The NEAR Protocol has built an extensive network of institutions that are committed to furthering the Open Web and Web3 evolution, and we are excited to deliver them safe and secure custody and staking services for their NEAR tokens.”

“Our partnership with BitGo is proof of our commitment to widening our ecosystem and creating a more diverse community of users. This is a significant step for NEAR and its foray into the world of institutional investments,” said Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation. “With BitGo, we will support their clients and give them the ability to stake and earn rewards on their NEAR assets—both safely and securely. We are also placing our confidence into BitGo by putting our own treasury in its custody. Together, we can truly make significant inroads in broadening the number of people leveraging our ecosystem and ultimately bring us closer to achieving our goal for mass Web3 adoption.”

“We are excited to see BitGo launch custody, execution and staking for NEAR, providing institutional caliber services to support one of the most exciting, high-growth Layer 1 protocols in the market.  We look forward to using BitGo’s services alongside the Near Foundation to continue our investments across this next chapter of growth and development for the NEAR ecosystem,” said Sal Ternullo, Partner at Warburg Serres Investments. 

BitGo adds NEAR to a growing list just shy of 600 tokens that it currently supports on its platform, underscoring the growing interest among institutions for access to high-speed, complex blockchains and their native tokens. To get started holding and staking NEAR with BitGo sign up here. 

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About BitGo

BitGo is the first digital asset company that has been focused exclusively on serving institutional clients since 2013. BitGo provides institutional investors with custody, liquidity, and security solutions. Active in both centralized and decentralized finance, BitGo offers market leading trading, lending, and borrowing services through its prime brokerage services and acts as the custodian for WBTC, the leading global stablecoin for Bitcoin.

In 2020, BitGo launched BitGo Prime, Portfolio and Tax, providing clients with a full-stack solution for digital assets. In 2018, it launched BitGo Trust Company, the first qualified custodian purpose-built for storing digital assets. BitGo processes approximately 20% of all global Bitcoin transactions, and supports over 500 coins and tokens. BitGo’s customer base includes the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges and institutional investors and spans more than 50 countries. For more information, please visit www.bitgo.com.

About NEAR 

NEAR is a high-performance blockchain that is designed to be super-fast, incredibly secure, and infinitely scalable. NEAR’s vision is to create a network that enables people to reimagine finance, creativity, and community in new and inclusive ways.

NEAR is built by an award-winning team of engineers and entrepreneurs to be simple to use, inclusive, and good for the environment. NEAR is backed by top VCs such as A16Z, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures. For more information, please visit https://near.org/ 

About NEAR Foundation 

The NEAR Foundation is a Swiss non-profit that oversees the governance and development of the NEAR protocol, a high-performance blockchain that is designed to be super-fast, incredibly secure, and infinitely scalable. NEAR is built by an award-winning team of engineers and entrepreneurs to be simple to use, inclusive, and good for the environment. The foundation aims to help evangelize, raise awareness, support and grow this ecosystem, and allocate grants on behalf of the ecosystem. For more information please visit https://near.foundation/