Unchained partners with Bakkt to expand its custody network

Unchained today announced that Bakkt has agreed to join its network of collaborative custody partners. Bakkt joins Coincover and Kingdom Trust as members of the network, providing Unchained’s collaborative custody offering with the greatest breadth in the industry, giving clients the most security and choice for storage of their bitcoin.

Unchained secures over $3 billion in bitcoin for clients—an increase of nearly 40% year-over-year since October 2022—and has over six years of operational experience securing billions of dollars in bitcoin. With the addition of Bakkt, Unchained’s collaborative custody network is the largest available for institutional investors, corporate treasuries, governments, and retail products. 

For institutions and businesses, Unchained’s collaborative custody network introduces an entirely new model for securing their bitcoin treasury. These accounts require several private keys to access their bitcoin, and clients can elect to hold a private key or not while distributing the rest geographically among best-in-class agents, including Unchained and now Bakkt. The model empowers clients to ensure their funds are nearly invulnerable to exchange hacks and collapses—without the risks of self-custody, such as loss of private keys. Unchained developed this product in light of the strong belief that no single custodian can be better than a custody solution that distributed the keys among several custodians.

“Market events of the past year have shown why qualified custody is so critical,” said Gavin Michael, CEO and President of Bakkt. “Entering Unchained’s enterprise custody network will allow us to reach new clients in need of regulated and secure custodians to safeguard their bitcoin. Security and compliance is at Bakkt’s core, and we look forward to working with a company that also prioritizes client security.”

“Unchained is proud to partner with Bakkt in providing an institutional-grade custody solution that maintains the ethos of bitcoin,” said Joe Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Unchained. “Unchained believes clients deserve bitcoin storage options that don’t render them dependent on single points of failure. They should also be able to verify, not just trust, that their assets are safe. Our collaborative custody network is therefore a critical part of the industry’s infrastructure, and we’re glad to have Bakkt be a part of it.”

The addition of Bakkt to Unchained’s collaborative custody network further expands the options clients have when building a vault with Unchained’s multi-signature custody offering. Bakkt Custody is operated by Bakkt Trust Company LLC, an NYDFS Qualified Custodian, and has current SOC I and SOC II type 2 reports. Founded in traditional finance by Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) to meet the needs of institutional clients, Bakkt shares Unchained’s value for compliant and secure crypto infrastructure and services.

Unchained’s partnership with Bakkt comes on the heels of Coincover joining Unchained’s collaborative custody network in October. As it continues to strive toward accessibility for individuals and businesses to achieve security and assurance levels historically reserved for large institutions, Unchained will continue to expand its collaborative custody partnerships while also ensuring that clients remain in unilateral control of private keys.

Book a consultation to learn more about Unchained’s enterprise and private wealth offerings here.

Unchained and Bakkt will hold a joint webinar on November 16, 2023 at 1pm ET to discuss collaborative custody as a risk management solution. Register here.