Bitget has launched the Open Custody Network (OCN), a new initiative connecting banks and institutional custodians directly with the exchange’s trading infrastructure. By leveraging asset mirroring across spot, margin, and futures markets, eligible users, asset managers, and market makers can access Bitget’s liquidity while maintaining asset custody with external providers. This structure mitigates centralized custody concentration risks, offering flexible, institutional-grade security and capital efficiency.
The initiative addresses a longstanding structural characteristic of the cryptocurrency exchange industry: the concentration of asset custody and trading activities within a single platform. Under the traditional centralized exchange model, users typically transfer their assets to an exchange to access the trading capabilities, concentrating custody and execution within the same venue.
Bitget OCN aims to address this shift by uniting custody independence, banking and institutional-grade security, integrated exchange trading, capital efficiency, and connected liquidity. Through Bitget OCN, users can maintain custody of their assets with participating external providers while accessing trading opportunities on Bitget, without requiring the underlying assets to be held directly in exchange custody. It also aims to provide traders with a more integrated experience, lower barriers to entry for everyone, and more equitable access to financial services.
OCN connects independent custody with Bitget’s spot, margin, and futures markets through asset mirroring, allowing eligible users to trade while keeping assets with their selected provider. For market makers, asset managers, and other institutions, the solutions offer a practical way to manage custody concentration risk while putting externally held assets to work across trading strategies. The result is greater custody flexibility and the ability to deploy externally held assets across trading strategies.
“We challenge the assumption that users must place their assets in an exchange’s custody to access its trading capabilities,” said Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget. “Our proposition, ‘Assets in Bank, Tradings on Bitget.’, puts custody choice at the centre of that approach. For the first time, users can leverage world-class liquidity and capital efficiency with lower barriers and zero compromise on custody.”
