Bitcoin Foundation Selects BitGo Enterprise as Financial Management Platform

The Bitcoin Foundation announced today that it will use BitGo's Enterprise product to better manage its financial operations.

Having the Bitcoin Foundation as a customer represents increased momentum and acceptance for the multi-signature wallet provider, chief executive and co-founder Will O’Brien told CoinDesk.

The Foundation conducts the majority of its financial transactions in bitcoin, he explained, including payroll, technical grants and other activities. BitGo will provide them financial and management tools to more effectively scale internal treasury control.

He added:

“I’m excited to partner with them and provide a case study to the world that bitcoin is a very viable currency for businesses.”

Advancing the bitcoin economy

O’Brien said BitGo is proud to count the Bitcoin Foundation as one of its customers as the companies are a “perfect fit”.

He credited the Foundation as an “impactful, influential organization in the community” that has looked after the evolution of bitcoin's protocol and the growth of the core development community.

The co-founder added:

“The number of companies that have been created, the level of venture capital activity and many of exciting new developments on the future horizon –Gavin [Andresen] and the others at the Bitcoin Foundation have instrumental to that success, so we’re excited to support them.”

To him, the new business represents major forces that can help propel bitcoin into widespread institutional adoption. Multi-signature technology is increasingly becoming a standard that all the major platforms and wallets will adopt, he said, because bitcoin needs a framework for security if it’s to continue moving into the mainstream.

Bringing multisig mainstream

BitGo first started looking at multisig technology in early 2013 when it brought the first multi-signature wallet to market.

Introduced earlier this year, BitGo Enterprise takes functionality a step further as a fully HD, multi-user platform. It allows spending limits with approvals, fraud checks, institutional reporting and a number of other security and service protections.

O’Brien believes that bitcoin's future security industry will be best left to specialists. He likened his company to VeriSign in the early stages of transacting money over the Internet, in that the authentication company developed the standard practices and technologies that made e-commerce safer for users.

He said:

“No matter where bitcoin goes, not every company is going to have the wherewithal to work at the very core levels of bitcoin and create all the necessary security policies and procedures. So we’re providing both the multi-signature-based Enterprise services and a platform with an API that can power the next generation of companies and ideas.”

Because bitcoin is so pervasive, O’Brien added, and because digital currency can dramatically and positively impact nearly every industry, there will be an influx of innovation powered by bitcoin.

“Before we know it bitcoin is going to be critical to our lives the way the Internet or mobile communication is critical,” he said. “I think it’s happening from all corners.”