Near Protocol News
Near and BitGo Partner Up as the Latter Introduces Custody Services
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With institutional investors developing more and more interest in crypto, they are now willing to try out different solutions, and open their doors to cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin itself.
The new move will allow the company to delve deeper into custody services and allow institutional investors that hold NEAR to engage in staking, store them, and manage them through BitGo. Meanwhile, the NEAR Foundation will use BitGo wallets to stake a portion of their entire treasury.
Why is the partnership important?
BitGo’s VP, Nuri Chang, commented on the move by saying that the nature of BitGo’s business makes it highly important for the company to capture and support all the leading blockchains in the industry. The number of tokens that BitGo can provide custody for is currently not known to the public.
Chang added that the new partnership will also bring benefits for the project’s developers, who will now be able to use BitGo’s wallets to launch support for NEAR. Chang also noted that the company is currently in the process of building BitGo staking support for NEAR specifically. This means that the company’s clients will be able to stake the altcoin directly from BitGo’s wallet, and all it will take to do that is a few clicks, thus making it user-friendly and accessible.
The new partnership between BitGo and Near Protocol is also important because it allowed the protocol to take the next step in its mission to spread its ecosystem, and provide additional services to the users.
How did the NEAR price respond?
Unfortunately for NEAR, the project’s price did not show any major activity following the announcement, meaning that it did not lead to an expected price spike. Previously, NEAR saw massive growth in 2022, as it raised $150 million in January alone, exceeding this feat in April, when it raised another $350 million.
These days, however, its price sits around $4.47, which does mark a small growth, but not as strong one as many had expected, given such a huge move for the protocol and its new exposure in institutional circles. Meanwhile, any price movement that the project did see recently is likely the result of the market’s own behavior. In other words, price growth seemingly mirrors the broader market recovery, and does not seem to be unique to NEAR.
This serves as another example of how strong the bear market that currently still holds the crypto sector really is. Previously, NEAR hit an ATH around January 16th, 2022, when it climbed just above $20. At the time of writing, its price is at $4.41, which is not the lowest it has been this yar, but it is barely above that point.
To learn more visit our Investing in Near Protocol guide.
