BitGo CEO on the Decision to Go Public

Hey, thank you for having me.

Yeah, great question. Look, a lot of what we've done over the last 12 years of our existence is make sure we're as transparent as we can possibly be as a company. That's meant, how do we audit our technology? How do we do our SOC audits? What insurance do we have? What regulatory background we have? And as you know, we've been constantly upgrading all of these parts. Most recently, we just moved to an OCC Federal National Bank charter. So this is all part of being ready for the world's largest financial institutions to become able to come into our space. And we think it's actually a really important unlock. So last year, 2025, tremendous regulatory unlock. All of a sudden, I'm here in New York right now, major firms all up and down Manhattan previously had been blocked from touching digital assets by way of the regulatory landscape and now all of a sudden they're in. So our TAM has literally doubled. Being a public company allows us to serve them. It's much easier for them to be able to come in and do diligence on a company like us as a public company than previously as a private company. So, it's just a continued evolution of what we've always done. And then lastly, in terms of the stock price, I mean, I do care about the stock price. I don't say it, but this is a long-term view we have in the company. Look, we're building infrastructure. We think it's all about growth. I think if you look at the performance of the company over the last 12 years, we've raised less money than pretty much any of our competitors by a lot. We've got more market share than our competitors and we think that our status not just here in the US which people are familiar with but also fully regulated in Europe and in the Middle East and in Singapore so we can meet our clients where they are and we think this is all poised for growth. So the stock price is where it's going to be. Being a public company actually shows to all of our clients our continued dedication to being completely transparent. Come and take a look at who BitGo is, what we do, see our books, see how we run it, and hopefully become clients.

Look, I think ultimately, your stock, you're trying to get it out to a broad distribution. And the retail channels have changed over the years. To be honest, I don't think the IPO process is fully adapted to what's possible here. I mean, we can go direct to retail through a whole bunch of channels. I was amazed and impressed at the quality of information that we got during the IPO process about the retail investors and their interest. So look, we think ultimately this brand, our company will have a big impact and interest to retail clients. I think we saw tremendous demand from the retail channels. Really proud that we put about 25% straight out into retail.

Look, I think retail deserves more credit. There's certainly a time in history where retail did not have as much information about the companies that they might be investing in and it was difficult for them maybe to participate at the same level. Look, all the way back to GameStop a few years ago, it was very clear like the retail investors while they can band together and do interesting things on their own, they are very educated in terms of what's going on with stock. So part of our world is we want to be transparent. We welcome that scrutiny wherever it comes from. I think it's easier for traditional IPOs to have picked a small set, let's say 200 various investors, and then you can try to understand what their selling and buying patterns are going to be and you can try to get more predicted stock output. I don't know if that's really meaningful other than for a short term. For the long term we're going to build this. We're going to continue to distribute more stock out over time just like every other company does. And a lot of that lands in retail at some point. Like you have to be a company that can handle being directly connected to retail. Lastly, though, look, tokenized equities are coming.