BitGo to Acquire Bitcoin Custodian

[MBi]

Kingdom Trust worked with BitGo to integrate XRP. Now BitGo owns them.

A big barrier to financial institutions directly using XRP are custody solutions, or the lack thereof. This is an exciting merger of two great companies. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/bitgo-to-acquire-bitcoin-custodian-as-it-targets-big-investors?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

 

https://ripple.com/insights/its-never-been-easier-to-access-and-store-xrp/

 

 

[Sharkey]

Have you worked with Kingdom Trust?   I have because they are the custodian for Bitcoin IRA, where I opened two accounts last year.  As I move my assets OUT I will be posting some factual information about my experience and a side-by-side comparison with the new custodian to which I am moving my assets.   I don’t have too many negative experiences with BitGo but as far as Kingdom Trust goes...we deserve better, people.   

 

[MBi]

Please do share your experience @Sharkey

In my experience companies in this space, more generally, are stretched very thin trying to expand and the area they most often lack resources in, is customer service. 

[Sharkey]

Thanks @MBi.  I plan to provide more information once my own experience has concluded successfully.  But the short version of the story is: 

Kingdom Trust is the custodian for Bitcoin IRA, which was the first IRA that allowed for cryptocurrency investing for retirement. Of course, I jumped on it when I learned that they were planning to offer XRP.

The staff at both Kingdom Trust and Bitcoin IRA seem like reasonably "nice folks."  However, you are right that they are stretched too thin.  If that were the only issue, I would not be going to the trouble of cashing my coins and transferring the fiat elsewhere.  These are some of the specific issues I've had:

To set up your account, Kingdom Trust/Bitcoin IRA charges a whopping 15% of your initial investment for fees (this goes down somewhat if you invest more than $50K, I believe).

When you want to make a trade, you must do it by phone, with two individuals (the Bitcoin IRA rep and the "trader,")  and you cannot place limit orders.  They trade through Genesis and you get what they offer you for a sale.  In my experience, they offered was overpriced buys and underpriced sells.  Example: on a recent sale of ETH, which was trading at ~$925-$929/coin, they "offered" me ~$903/ETH, while on this very call, I overheard another agent simultaneously selling the same asset to another customer for $948/ETH.  Once they have your business, you are totally stuck with whatever price they give you, assuming you want to either trade or withdraw.

Between Christmas and New Year's, the Bitcoin IRA office was closed, yes closed, but there was no prior notification of this. As a result, I was unable to trade, although there were very lucrative opportunities that I missed.  The representative at Bitcoin IRA did not have a voicemail so I had to surmise that he was unavailable until I eventually reached some guy who was there answering the phone for new customers...  When I called back on January 2 to attempt making the trade, I was told they were too busy and I had to "make an appointment" for the following day to trade.  Again, another lost profit opportunity.

On January 2, I also attempted to contact Kingdom Trust, and waited in the queue for about 50 minutes.  I did receive a notification that I was "caller #20," and that I was free to leave a voicemail for a return call ASAP. 

When I was able to finally trade on January 3, I then had another wait until the fiat was available.  It was estimated to be 7 to 10 business days, with no promise of when funds were to be available.  But wait, there's more...after funds are "available," there are several additional days until a withdrawal can be completed.  Parenthetically, if you actually decide to trade one coin for another, you must first sell, wait the perfunctory 7-10 business days for funds to "settle," and then pay an additional 5% fee to buy the second coin (at the price offered to you...see above).  

Kingdom Trust sent out a letter in December announcing that, beginning in January, they would be charging a monthly maintenance fees for their custodial services.  This is new, and not what I agreed to initially when opening the accounts.  I am at work now and don't currently have that letter to reference, but the fees are a percentage of your total assets, and monthly fees are, I believe, something like 0.1% of your assets. So, essentially, the more you have been able to save, the more they will assess you monthly for their stellar services (no pun intended).

The good news is that we now have multiple choices for IRA investing with crypto.  Yay for free enterprise and capitalism!  As I mentioned above, I am in the process of moving my assets to a new IRA elsewhere.  This will be tedious, especially since I have a considerable amount of XRP in Kingdom Trust and don't want to make a single move that takes 10+ days to complete with so much potential volatility.  But I do plan to post a more comprehensive comparison when I have gotten through this transition.   So far, however, the new IRA and custodian are considerably better, IMHO.  

I truly hope that others can benefit from my experiences.  Stay tuned.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RDS]

19 hours ago, MBi said:

Kingdom Trust worked with BitGo to integrate XRP. Now BitGo owns them.

A big barrier to financial institutions directly using XRP are custody solutions, or the lack thereof. This is an exciting merger of two great companies. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/bitgo-to-acquire-bitcoin-custodian-as-it-targets-big-investors?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

 

https://ripple.com/insights/its-never-been-easier-to-access-and-store-xrp/

 

 

sorry bro, i realized after starting new thread about the same topic that you have already started it. Good job. Thanks.