Onramp targets corporate Bitcoin custody after crypto hacks
Onramp, a bitcoin financial services platform, says it will make free business accounts availble from November 10, giving companies access to corporate Bitcoin management built around internal withdrawal approvals and multi-institution custody. The offering is designed for businesses holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset, rather than cryptocurrency exchanges managing the hot wallets used to process customer trading and withdrawals.
For companies with Bitcoin on the balance sheet, this is not an abstract governance debate anymore, if it ever was.
The launch follows two major cryptocurrency security incidents that have raised questions about who can authorize transactions and how much control should rest with a single employee, institution or piece of infrastructure.
Binance reported that its hot wallets were compromised at approximately 20:05 UTC on October 29, resulting in the theft of approximately $6.3 billion in tokenized assets across multiple blockchains. The incident was not limited to Bitcoin.
On October 31, the Federal Bureau of Investigation attributed the theft of more than $6 billion from Binance to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group. The agency said investigators had observed the attackers converting stolen assets primarily into Ether and warned that further laundering through decentralized finance platforms and instant-swap services was expected. The FBI’s official attribution of the Binance attack also included wallet addresses associated with the suspected operators.
Binance subsequently said it had covered approximately 95% of the affected amount using corporate resources and protection funds. Replacing customer assets and recovering the original stolen cryptocurrency are separate processes and should be tracked seperately. The exchange’s recovery efforts following the $6.3 billion incident have involved both replacing affected holdings and coordinating with industry participants to freeze stolen assets.
A separate incident involved Bitget, where attackers stole approximately $387.5 million from exchange wallet infrastructure on September 24. The breach occured more than a month before Binance’s October 29 incident, rather than immediately following it. Bitget initially estimated the affected amount at $351.6 million before raising the figure after identifying additional transactions. The exchange said attackers compromised a backend system, falsified transaction data and triggered its authorization process without obtaining the affected private keys. The technical findings from Bitget’s $387.5 million breach provide another example of how weaknesses outside the actual key-storage layer can lead to unauthorized withdrawals.
Onramp combines internal and external withdrawal approvals
Onramp’s business offering is built around Multi-Institution Custody, a model that distributes control of Bitcoin holdings across three independent institutions rather than relying on a single custodian.
For business accounts, the participating institutions are Onramp, Tetra Trust and CoinCover. The arrangement uses a 2-of-3 multisignature structure, meaning two of the three institutions must independently authorize and co-sign a withdrawal. A transaction also requires the client’s instruction before it can proceed.
The company combines this external custody arrangement with internal business controls. Its corporate offering includes user management, role-based permissions, view-only access, spending limits and transaction approval workflows. Companies can designate employees to initiate transactions and assign other authorized individuals to approve them.
Onramp also says corporate holdings are maintained in dedicated, client-titled vaults rather than pooled with other accounts. The balances can be independently checked through on-chain records, giving companies another way to monitor their Bitcoin holdings.
The account itself is not the hard part; deciding who gets to move the asset is.
The structure addresses two separate governance questions. Internal approval requirements limit the ability of an individual employee to move company assets without authorization, while the external institutional arrangement prevents any single custody provider from independently completing a withdrawal.
Onramp also discloses up to $50 million in aggregate custody insurance through Canopius, a Lloyd’s of London syndicate. The company’s published disclosure specifies that the existing coverage does not include the Tetra key quorum and that policy terms and exclusions apply. The insurance should therefore be considered separately from the security provided by the custody architecture itself.
The company is selling a control structure, and not just another account dashboard.
Free business accounts do not necessarily mean free custody
The November 10 announcement describes the business accounts as free, but Onramp’s existing public materials distinguish between opening an account and paying for the financial services attached to it.
The company’s help center says account creation is free, while customers pay fees for the products they choose to activate. It also explains that business and trust accounts require a consultation with the onboarding team because of their additional documentation and compliance requirements.
Onramp’s current pricing page lists its Business service at $375 per month, or $3,600 annually, alongside a one-time setup fee of $500. The package includes Multi-Institution Custody vaults, inheritance planning, Guardian Plus, user management and account controls.
There is a catch in the word “free”, though, and it sits in the pricing details.
Onramp has not publicly clarified whether the November 10 launch introduces a new free business tier, removes the account-opening charge or changes the existing pricing for its corporate custody service. Until those terms are confirmed, free account access should not be interpreted as free institutional custody.
Why additional approvals must go beyond signing transactions
The Bitget incident provides a particularly relevant comparison, even though its exchange infrastructure differs from Onramp’s corporate treasury model.
Bitget said its attackers compromised a backend component responsible for processing wallet transactions. By manipulating transaction data, they were able to trigger the exchange’s existing authorization process and move funds without obtaining the underlying private keys.
This illustrates a weakness that can remain even when private keys are properly protected. If the systems preparing withdrawal instructions are compromised, legitimate authorization mechanisms may end up processing transactions that the organization never intended to approve.
Binance’s investigation has raised a related question about transaction-signing controls. A November 4 investigation by blockchain analytics firm Bitquery identified 50 approvals authorized by Binance’s transaction-signing infrastructure, allowing attacker-controlled code to operate through a heavily used Ethereum hot wallet.
The approvals were recorded at approximately 20:20:59 UTC on October 29, while Binance revoked the authorization at 00:10:35 UTC on October 30. That left an interval of approximately three hours and 50 minutes. Bitquery estimated that $729 million in stolen USDT escaped before Tether’s freezes took effect, although its findings did not establish how the attackers initially gained access to Binance’s signing infrastructure.
The findings formed part of wider scrutiny of crypto security and token-control mechanisms, including the permissions and administrative capabilities that determine how digital assets can be moved.
For corporate Bitcoin custody providers, the implications extend beyond requiring multiple signatures. An effective approval system must also ensure that authorized individuals see and verify the actual transaction details, including the destination address, amount, network and origin of the request.
If compromised software can present false instructions to an otherwise legitimate approval process, adding another signature may not be enough. Independent verification of the transaction itself becomes just as important as verifying the people authorizing it.
There is also an important distinction between the environments involved. Binance’s incident concerned exchange hot-wallet infrastructure holding multiple tokenized assets, while Onramp is targeting companies that want to hold Bitcoin in corporate treasury vaults. The two systems have different operational requirements, and there is no basis to conclude that Onramp’s custody model would necessarily have prevented the Binance attack.
For corporate finance teams, the practical questions will include who can create withdrawal requests, who can approve them, how new destination addresses are verified and how quickly compromised employee accounts can be disabled. The ability to distribute custody across institutions and employees is useful, but the security of the systems connecting those parties remains essential.
Onramp’s November 10 launch comes at a time when corporate Bitcoin ownership is attracting renewed attention to custody and governance. The actual value of the offering will depend on the precise terms of its free accounts, the cost of the underlying custody service, the scope of insurance and the effectiveness of its transaction-verification procedures.
The larger issue is no longer simply where companies store their Bitcoin. It is whether their custody arrangements can prevent one compromised device, employee account or institution from becoming the single point through which corporate holdings can be moved.
Johan Shamshad is Editor-in-Chief at Dave Finances, covering financial markets, digital assets, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, payments and regulation. Since 2023, he has also worked as an editor at Gulf News, the UAE English-language newspaper published by Al Nisr Publishing LLC. His work focuses on market-moving developments, company disclosures, regulatory changes and trading infrastructure, with an emphasis on primary-source verification and practical context for traders and investors.