Near Protocol is looking to attract institutional investors to its ecosystem thanks to this latest development.
Digital asset company BitGo announced on Tuesday, July 19th, that it will support the NEAR Foundation protocol and its assets with qualified custody services. This latest development will make the NEAR token available to thousands of institutional investors globally.
Thanks to this latest development, institutional investors holding the NEAR token can enjoy custody services and also stake their assets via the qualified custody wallets on BitGo.
As part of the agreement, the NEAR Foundation, a Switzerland-based non-profit that oversees sustainable development on the protocol, will also custody its own treasury with BitGo.
The foundation will also stake part of this treasury using BitGo wallets. While commenting on this latest development, BitGo’s vice president of product Nuri Chang stated that the new partnership would enable developers working on projects such as exchanges and protocols to add support for the NEAR token using BitGo’s programmatic wallets. He said;
“We’re also building BitGo staking support for NEAR in and of itself. What that means is clients can stake NEAR directly from a BitGo wallet with literally a few clicks.”
NEAR Protocol has been around since 2018 and is one of the leading cryptocurrency projects in the industry.
Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, commented that the partnership with BitGo indicates NEAR’s commitment to widening its ecosystem. She said;
“This is a significant step for NEAR and its foray into the world of institutional investments.”
Near Protocol has recently focused on cross-chain interoperability. Last year, the team launched Rainbow Bridge, allowing its users to transfer ERC-20 tokens between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchains.
NEAR currently occupies 25th place in the cryptocurrency market in terms of total market cap. At press time, NEAR is trading at $4.46, up by more than 2% in the last 24 hours.