In a wide-ranging interview on the David Lin Report, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe issued a stark warning to institutional and retail crypto investors: don’t count on insurance to fully protect your digital assets.

Belshe addressed one of the most misunderstood components of the crypto infrastructure stack — insurance. “Insurance is not something that you can commercially expect to cover 100% of digital assets,” he said. “They’re too big for that.”

BitGo, which recently crossed $100 billion in digital assets under custody, offers institutional clients up to $250 million in insurance coverage with additional excess cover — but even that, Belshe admits, barely scratches the surface.

“There’s only one guy that can write an uncapped insurance policy — and that’s the FDIC,” Belshe noted. “They can do that for U.S. dollars because they can print more of them. But for crypto? You won’t find an underwriter offering that kind of coverage.” In fact, even the idea that the FDIC fully covers retail bank customers is a myth, as the agnecy caps its coverage at $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.

Robust Custody Beats Insurance in Digital Asset Security

The limitations of crypto insurance were thrown into the spotlight recently after major breaches like the Bybit hack, which reportedly lost over $150 million. Belshe argues that even with insurance policies in place, such incidents reveal a fundamental issue: insurance alone is not a substitute for robust custody infrastructure. This has always been the case in crypto and there is nothing to indicate anything will change in the foreseeable future.

“Insurance matters, but security architecture matters more,” he said. “We already rebalance our clients — no single wallet holds more than $100 million. If Bybit had done that, they would have saved $1.4 billion.”

Belshe’s comments also emphasized the need for crypto custodians to layer insurance with hardened operational policies — including cold storage, multi-signature authentication, geographic key distribution, and third-party risk assessments. “You need to eliminate single points of failure,” he said. “That’s where most breakdowns start.”

In the absence of comprehensive insurance options, Belshi outlined BitGo’s alternative risk management strategies:

Asset Distribution: Breaking large holdings into smaller wallets to limit potential breach impacts
Cold Storage: Keeping significant holdings offline
Multi-Signature Security: Requiring multiple approvers for transactions
Geographical Distribution: Spreading assets across seven global trust companies
Regulatory Oversight: Maintaining fiduciary duty through regulatory compliance

“Security is eliminating single points of failure,” Belshi emphasized. “If you have a key held by one person, you split it across two. If it’s held at one company, you split it across two. If it’s held in one jurisdiction, you split it across two.”

For retail investors, the message is no less important. BitGo now offers custody solutions to non-institutional clients as well, applying the same infrastructure used by banks, asset managers, and hedge funds. But Belshe cautions that many retail users are unaware of what their platforms actually cover — or don’t.

“When people hear ‘insured,’ they assume it means full protection. But what does the policy actually cover? Hacks? Insider theft? Regulatory seizure? Those are all different,” he said. “The term ‘insurance’ gets thrown around, but few ask the right questions.”

As digital assets continue to gain mainstream adoption, Belshe believes institutions and individuals alike will need to evolve their assumptions about risk. “Insurance is part of the toolkit,” he said, “but your first defense is architecture. If you’re relying on insurance alone, you’re already exposed.”

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ May 15, 2025 6:24 am