BitGo Launches Bitcoin Staking Through Stacks for Institutional Clients

BitGo on Nov. 3 launched a Bitcoin staking service for eligible institutional clients of its bank, letting the owners of large BTC balances earn rewards while their coins stay in qualified custody. The product runs on the Stacks network, and no bitcoin leaves the base layer for the life of a bond, BitGo and Stacks Labs said in the announcement. The service sits inside BitGo Bank & Trust, National Association, so participating clients do not have to onboard a second provider to take part.

The structure avoids the wrappers and bridges that usually carry bitcoin onto other networks. There is no wrapping, no bridging and no transfer of the underlying coin to another chain or counterparty, according to Crypto Briefing's report. The principal stays timelocked on Bitcoin's first layer inside BitGo's custody for the length of the bond, and the announcement states that the design carries no slashing risk, the penalty that can eat into stakes on proof-of-stake networks.

Each position pairs the committed bitcoin with STX, the native token of Stacks, at 5 percent of the staked BTC value. STX serves as the capacity asset that secures the position's claim on rewards. Bonds run about six months, principal is returned at maturity, and rewards are paid weekly in BTC. Each bonding period carries a target rate that is set before the period opens and applies for the full term, though the realized payout can differ depending on when miner rewards are distributed. The report put the target at around 3 percent APY and described it as variable and not guaranteed.

Stacks secures its blocks with a mechanism the project calls Proof of Transfer, and miners on the network commit BTC as part of producing them. That committed bitcoin flows to participants in each bond, so payouts do not depend on lending the staked coins to a borrower or rehypothecating them, the announcement explains. Crypto Briefing noted that the arrangement lets institutions put idle treasury bitcoin to work without moving it out of the custody environment that investment committees already approved.

Miner activity also decides how generous each period turns out. The report explained that returns move up or down with competition: if fewer miners take part, or if they commit less BTC, the reward pool for a given bond shrinks and holders receive less than the stated target. The announcement makes the same point from the other side, saying the contract is designed to deliver the rate that was posted before the period opened even though the timing of miner distributions can shift the realized result. Stacks Labs framed the custody problem in plainer terms, writing that earning bitcoin on bitcoin has typically meant moving coins out to a lender or a counterparty, a step most institutions refuse to take with their core holdings.

Access is narrow at launch. Only whitelisted accounts at BitGo Bank & Trust can take part, and Stacks Labs manages that whitelist. Institutions can register for upcoming bonding periods through the project's institutional staking page.

BitGo has worked with Stacks since 2021, when it brought the network's assets into its custody platform. It became one of the earliest sBTC signers in 2024 and was among the first to support the Nakamoto upgrade, and in August 2026 it added institutional custody and integrated minting of sBTC, the blog post recounts. Stacks' Bitcoin Staking product itself debuted with the Genesis Bond in September 2026, a launch aimed at institutions that hold keys themselves. The report estimated participation in that first bond at between 230 and 250 BTC and named 21Shares, HashKey Cloud and UTXO Management among the institutional participants. The BitGo integration is described as the first major qualified-custody setup for the product.

The report also set out the costs of the structure. Six months of illiquidity is a long commitment in a market that can move sharply inside a week, and the STX pairing adds exposure to a second asset, which can offset part of the bitcoin return if its value falls over the term of the bond. The whitelist currently limits the service to a small set of institutional accounts, and the benchmark for judging demand is the 230 to 250 BTC committed to the Genesis Bond.