Bitcoin giant Strategy is guarding its massive $72 billion BTC stash with an air of secrecy. It has spread its holdings across multiple undisclosed custodians. So far, Coinbase has been confirmed as one of the safekeepers, and speculation points to Fidelity potentially holding some of its BTC. Two weeks ago, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong bragged on X that his company holds Bitcoin for eight of the ten publicly traded BTC holders. This strongly suggests that Coinbase is one of Strategy’s custodians. Our institutional team is crushing it – two awesome stats from our QBR this week: 1) 8 of the top 10 publicly traded companies with BTC on their balance sheet use Coinbase Prime. 2) There's $140B of crypto in US ETFs, and 81% of that is stored with Coinbase. We’re tracking > 50… — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) June 27, 2025 Strategy has long remained tight-lipped about its arrangements, only referencing “various custody” setups. The Bitcoin giant has carefully avoided naming a single firm responsible for safeguarding its immense digital fortune. Strategy’s most likely custodians What is known about Strategy Bitcoin custodians? They are simply “U.S.-based, institutional-grade custodians that have demonstrated records of regulatory compliance and information security, and all of our custodians are New York Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”)-regulated custodians.” That’s descriptive enough to whittle down the list of probable custodians. Only 9 of the 35 recipients who had NYDFS BitLicenses had limited purpose trust charters when Strategy sent its letter in the spring of 2023. BitGo, Coinbase, GMO-Z.com, Fidelity, Bakkt, Gemini, NYDIG, Paxos, and Standard Custody & Trust Company are among them. Unsurprisingly, Coinbase is the “principal market for Bitcoin” in MSTR filings. Coinbase was the first place where Strategy bought Bitcoin. Arkham Intelligence says it found $70,000 worth of the company’s BTC going to Fidelity in May. Other than Coinbase and Fidelity, the Bakkt Trust Company could also be on the list. Over the years, Bakkt, the company’s former parent, has been a lot of things. Bakkt bought Digital Asset Custody Company in 2019 and got a limited-purpose trust charter. Will Strategy face FTX’s fate? What Sam Bankman-Fried did with FTX has been a grand cautionary tale for investors. With Strategy’s custody secrecy, the entity could face the same devilish extinction. In another custody scam, the Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank bankruptcy, regulators and shareholders were kept in the dark about how much the company was affected. In that mix, Strategy had used some of its BTC as security for a loan from Silvergate. When asked about their roles in the bankruptcies and how that affected the company, Strategy (then MicroStrategy) told the SEC: Recent bankruptcies in the crypto industry and failures of certain financial institutions have not materially directly impacted the business or financial condition of MicroStrategy. We do not have any material exposure to companies in the crypto industry in our enterprise analytics business, and our customers include leading companies from a wide range of industries. Strategy (then MicroStrategy) The case of FTX could happen to Strategy under Saylor’s leadership – he has faced bankruptcy before. He once lost $6 billion in a day ($11 billion adjusted for inflation) as the dot-com bubble burst. That event was among the biggest single-day personal losses in human history until that point. The rest of the market remains hell bent on getting custody proof, but Micahel Saylor does not think so. He says it is a “bad idea” to publicly share “proof of reserves” or otherwise provide a detailed list of custodians, citing security concerns. However, Armstrong said that Strategy is a public company, trading under the ticker MSTR; therefore, some amount of disclosure is expected. Cryptopolitan Academy: Want to grow your money in 2025? Learn how to do it with DeFi in our upcoming webclass. Save Your Spot
