EPISODE 134 — What Is Crypto Custody — and Why Does It Matter?

When BlackRock launched its BUIDL tokenised Treasury fund, it used Anchorage Digital as custodian. When MicroStrategy holds over 500,000 Bitcoin on its corporate balance sheet, those Bitcoin sit in multi-signature cold storage managed through institutional custody infrastructure. When spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024, Coinbase Custody holds the Bitcoin on behalf of BlackRock and Fidelity. Crypto custody is the infrastructure that makes institutional participation possible — and understanding it tells you something important about the difference between safe and unsafe ways to hold digital assets at any scale.

In this episode of Crypto for Beginners, we explain crypto custody from first principles. We start with what custody actually means: the secure management of private keys — the cryptographic secrets that authorise blockchain transactions — at a scale and in a framework that satisfies regulatory requirements, investor obligations, and audit standards that individual self-custody cannot meet. We explain the two primary technical approaches: multi-signature custody, where multiple independent keys must sign every transaction and no single key compromise enables theft, and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) custody, where no complete private key ever exists in one place — the computation to sign is distributed across multiple parties who each contribute a key share.

We walk through the leading institutional custodians in 2026: Coinbase Custody — holding Bitcoin for multiple spot ETFs with $320M insurance coverage; BitGo — the multi-sig pioneer supporting 400+ digital assets; Fireblocks — the MPC-based platform that has processed over $6 trillion in transfers; Anchorage Digital — the only crypto-native nationally chartered bank; and Fidelity Digital Assets. We explain why regulated custody infrastructure was the critical enabling factor for ETF approvals and corporate treasury adoption. We cover the post-FTX regulatory changes that strengthened asset segregation requirements.

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