Liquid Mercury has selected BitGo as Crypto-as-a-Service provider across its entire trading and marketplace stack, deepening a partnership that reflects a larger institutional shift inside digital assets: custody, compliance, and settlement infrastructure are increasingly becoming the foundation of crypto market structure.
The agreement brings BitGo’s qualified custody, OCC-regulated trust structure, cold storage infrastructure, and compliance framework into Liquid Mercury’s trading products covering spot, options, futures, perpetual swaps, OTC trading, and tokenized real-world assets.
The announcement also highlights how institutional crypto firms are increasingly trying to replicate the operational standards of traditional prime brokerage and post-trade finance.
Custody Is Becoming The Core Layer Of Institutional Crypto Markets
Under the expanded partnership, BitGo will provide custody infrastructure across Liquid Mercury’s Mercury Pro, Mercury OTC, and Mercury RWA products.
BitGo said the infrastructure includes multi-signature cold storage, insurance coverage of up to $250 million, and regulated custody through BitGo Bank & Trust, an OCC-regulated digital asset trust bank.
The integration immediately becomes available to existing and prospective Liquid Mercury clients.
Tony Saliba, CEO of Liquid Mercury, said institutional participants increasingly view custody as a core market requirement rather than an auxiliary service.
“As we continue to scale our platform and onboard sophisticated institutional participants, custody is not just a feature, it’s foundational,” Saliba said. “BitGo’s track record in securing digital assets at scale, combined with their regulatory standing and advanced technology, made this a clear choice. Our clients demand the same institutional-grade infrastructure they’re accustomed to in traditional markets, and BitGo delivers exactly that.”
The emphasis on custody reflects how crypto market structure has evolved since the collapses of FTX, Celsius, Voyager, and several other digital asset firms earlier in the decade.
Institutional traders increasingly prioritize segregation of assets, regulated custody, counterparty risk management, and post-trade settlement controls before committing larger allocations to digital assets.
The shift has created a growing market for infrastructure providers capable of combining trading, clearing, financing, settlement, compliance, and custody inside integrated institutional workflows.
BitGo has increasingly positioned itself inside that layer.
The company now provides custody, staking, financing, settlement, wallets, trading infrastructure, and stablecoin services across regulated entities. BitGo also operates one of the first federally chartered digital asset trust banks owned by a publicly traded company.
The broader institutional custody market continues expanding rapidly.
Boston Consulting Group estimated institutional digital asset custody could become a multi-trillion-dollar market as tokenization, stablecoins, ETFs, and institutional trading volumes continue growing. Coinbase, Anchorage Digital, Fireblocks, Copper, Ripple Custody, and several traditional banks are also expanding institutional custody infrastructure.
Crypto Trading Firms Increasingly Resemble Traditional Prime Brokers
The partnership also reflects a deeper structural change happening across crypto markets.
Trading platforms increasingly compete on operational infrastructure rather than only liquidity access or exchange connectivity.
Liquid Mercury positions itself as infrastructure for professional and institutional trading rather than a retail exchange. Its products cover multi-venue execution, OTC workflows, derivatives trading, liquidity aggregation, and tokenized asset marketplaces.
The BitGo integration adds another critical layer: regulated post-trade custody and settlement.
Mercury Pro users trading spot, options, futures, and perpetual swaps will settle directly into BitGo custody. OTC counterparties using Mercury OTC will also settle through BitGo’s regulated infrastructure.
The model increasingly resembles traditional prime brokerage architecture used in equities, derivatives, and foreign exchange markets.
In traditional finance, prime brokers sit between institutional clients, exchanges, clearinghouses, liquidity providers, and custody infrastructure while managing financing, collateral, settlement, and operational workflows.
Crypto markets historically operated differently. Traders often left assets directly on exchanges, creating large concentrations of counterparty risk.
That structure is gradually changing.
Institutional participants increasingly want external qualified custody, automated settlement, segregated collateral, and independent post-trade infrastructure similar to traditional markets.
Chen Fang, Chief Revenue Officer at BitGo, said, “We’re proud to deepen our partnership with Liquid Mercury and serve as the infrastructure backbone for their entire product suite. By combining Liquid Mercury’s advanced trading technology with BitGo’s Crypto-as-a-Service infrastructure, Liquid Mercury’s clients are secured with qualified custody and OCC-regulated compliance.”
The convergence between crypto infrastructure and traditional prime brokerage models has accelerated over the past year.
Ripple’s acquisition of Hidden Road, Coinbase Prime’s expansion, Copper’s collateral-management model, and growing institutional clearing infrastructure all point toward the same direction: institutional crypto increasingly revolves around collateral mobility, custody segregation, financing, and post-trade automation.
Tokenized Assets Push Custody Infrastructure Into New Markets
The Mercury RWA integration may ultimately become one of the most important parts of the partnership.
Liquid Mercury said BitGo’s infrastructure will support issuance, trading, and management of tokenized real-world assets spanning sports investments, alternative assets, and other tokenized markets.
The tokenization sector has become one of the fastest-growing themes across institutional digital assets.
BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, Securitize, Ripple, JPMorgan, and several major exchanges are increasingly building infrastructure around tokenized funds, bonds, private credit, collateral, and alternative assets.
Boston Consulting Group and Ripple estimated tokenized assets could reach nearly $19 trillion by 2033, while McKinsey projected tokenization could become a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure layer across capital markets.
That transition creates a major operational requirement: secure custody and transfer infrastructure for tokenized financial instruments.
Unlike traditional crypto custody, tokenized real-world assets may involve securities law, transfer restrictions, compliance checks, settlement conditions, investor accreditation requirements, and asset servicing obligations.
Infrastructure providers therefore increasingly need to combine wallet technology with regulated custody, compliance controls, reporting systems, and programmable settlement capabilities.
The BitGo-Liquid Mercury partnership positions both firms inside that trend.
The larger implication is that institutional crypto markets are becoming less exchange-centric and more infrastructure-centric.
Trading venues alone are no longer enough.
Institutional participants increasingly want integrated custody, financing, settlement, risk management, collateral mobility, and tokenized asset support operating together inside regulated workflows.
That evolution may ultimately determine which firms become the dominant infrastructure providers of the next phase of digital asset markets.
Sources And Further Reading:
- Liquid Mercury and BitGo announcement
- BitGo
- Liquid Mercury
- BCG and Ripple tokenization market report
- McKinsey report on tokenization
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Takeaway
The BitGo and Liquid Mercury partnership reflects a broader institutional shift in crypto markets away from exchange-centric trading and toward infrastructure-centric finance built around regulated custody, collateral management, settlement, and tokenized assets. The next competitive battleground may increasingly revolve around who controls post-trade infrastructure rather than only trading liquidity.
