PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BitGo®, the leading bitcoin security platform, today announced its Verified by BitGo® proof-of-solvency service. Immediately adopted by micropayment service ChangeTip, BitGo’s Verified by BitGo product provides a real-time view of bitcoin assets, quickly and easily assuring ChangeTip’s customers and partners of adequate funds. Any company using BitGo’s class leading security platform can adopt and use Verified by BitGo to safely and securely provide complete financial transparency.
ChangeTip, the popular service for sending ‘tips’ via social media, email or text message to express appreciation for quality internet content or services, will use Verified by BitGo to allow customers to easily demonstrate solvency of their accounts, enhancing trust and confidence in the service.
“BitGo’s mission is to help make the bitcoin ecosystem more secure, and we’re now excited to be taking the next major step in that direction,” said BitGo CTO and co-founder Ben Davenport. “Today we are launching our Verified by BitGo service, bringing the era of unverified funds to a close.”
Prior to the introduction of Verified by BitGo, Bitcoin businesses and operations were not able to provide a public, trustless verification that they were operating in a solvent state. Past funds verification attempts included periodic movement of coins or manual signing messages, but these steps proved cumbersome and often opened new security and privacy risks.
The Verified by BitGo service offers transparency as a service, allowing any business to easily show its assets and cryptographically prove that it is operating in a solvent state. Now, end users of any business using the service can view that the company’s assets are greater than its liabilities, and verify that his or her account is included in the total liabilities. Verified by BitGo is the equivalent of a publicly accessible audit that provides transparency and security, demonstrating that the sum of all user accounts is equal to or less than its total assets.
“Building trust is critical to expanding our user base within the bitcoin community and beyond, and using BitGo to demonstrate our Proof of Reserves goes a long way to achieving it,” said ChangeTip CEO Nick Sullivan. “We believe that the combination of digital currencies and social payments across multiple social platforms will pay off the long-held promises of micropayments; ChangeTip is ideally positioned to deliver on that promise.”
A primary Bitcoin security pioneer, BitGo has created a complete suite of products suitable for securing any Bitcoin operation or transaction. BitGo’s multi-sig wallets protect both private and institutional holdings in either hot or cold storage. A series of corporate management tools allow enterprises to complete any institutional treasury function with complete security and control. A highly flexible and scalable API offering allows established or startup Bitcoin operations to easily and rapidly build out services protected by the most highly regarded security infrastructure in the Bitcoin industry. Additionally, BitGo has partnered with C4 to introduce the CryptoCurrency Security Standard, a template for certifying the 10 fundamental aspects of cryptocurrency security. BitGo also introduced first-of-its-kind comprehensive insurance coverage for bitcoin theft from the global, A-rated XL Group insurance companies, offering a baseline $250,000 protection for all commercial customers, and is pioneering a variety of proof-of-reserve products suitable for exchange, trading desk, and retail use.
ABOUT CHANGETIP
ChangeTip is the public name for ChangeCoin, a company focused on providing fast, frictionless micropayments to anyone or any organization in the world*. The only company in the world to offer free U.S. and cross-border micropayments across multiple social platforms, ChangeTip allows people to express appreciation and pay other individuals or organizations via monetary “tips.” These tips are sent within the context of each social platform experience and thus allow users to transact seamlessly in the normal course of their Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and other social media interactions. In this way, ChangeTip represents not only the next generation of financial payment infrastructure, but also the next iteration of the Internet of Value.
Built using bitcoin blockchain technology, the company’s platform allows instant transactions between two parties without inconveniencing either user with formal sign-up processes and days-long waiting periods for bank account and other traditional user validations. In addition, the company’s Tip.Me widget allows any content producer (artist, writer, musician, publication, etc.) to accept tips via social media on the ChangeTip platform.
ABOUT BITGO, INC. // BitGo is the leader in bitcoin security and a pioneer of multi-sig technology. The company offers BitGo Enterprise, an enterprise-grade, multi-sig, multi-user bitcoin wallet, and BitGo Platform API, a robust set of tools and services to access the underlying platform. BitGo was founded by veterans in online security, digital currency, and financial technology. The company has raised more than $14 million in financing from elite Silicon Valley venture capitalists and angels, and bitcoin industry insiders who have backed successful companies like PayPal, Netscape, Red Hat, Proofpoint, Verisign, Juniper Networks, Yammer, and Tesla. To learn more, visit www.bitgo.com.
*In keeping with American law and financial industry standards, the ChangeTip service is not available in FATF “non-cooperative” and other “blacklisted” countries such as Liberia and Myanmar.
