Bitget Expands Off-Exchange Settlement Routes for Assets Like Sui

Bitget Rebuilds Institutional Custody First

Institutional demand in 2026 is shaped less by which tokens a venue lists than by how it lets large capital move on and off the platform, and Bitget has placed that plumbing at the center of its build-out. A joint survey by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon covering 351 companies found that roughly 50% of institutions planning to increase their crypto exposure in 2026 name better infrastructure as the driver, with custody, settlement and risk controls ranked among the top reasons. Bitget, whose institutional services arm carries that pitch, says institutional business is its focus in its ninth year, and the company is building support for more than one custody model rather than a single imposed structure. The work sits inside what it calls a “universal exchange” strategy spanning crypto and tokenized assets, a field where Sui is already active through its own tokenized-asset efforts. For tokens traded on venues like this one, Sui price and liquidity now turn on plumbing decisions as much as on sentiment. The question venues face is no longer what to list but how to allow capital in and out; equity markets split broker from custodian long ago, and crypto exchanges are reorganizing around the same demand. The survey data behind the shift is specific. Some 61% of companies already invested in digital assets use more than one custodian, and most give risk reduction as the reason. Regulated asset managers often require an independent, regulated custodian before they will even evaluate a trading platform. Market makers and quantitative firms sit at the other end: they trade across many venues and care most about how quickly collateral can be redeployed. Bitget's live relationship with Signum serves the regulated side, while its long-running Copper ClearLoop integration gives qualified clients access to the exchange with assets remaining inside Copper's infrastructure. The company also lists Cactus Custody Oasis, Fireblocks Off Exchange, OSL MirrorEX and Bitfire PrimeMirror as further custody and settlement ties, and says it is in contact with regulated custodians such as Komainu, founded by Nomura, CoinShares and Ledger.

Off-Exchange Settlement and the Hedge Fund Shift

The mechanism underneath is off-exchange settlement, which separates where assets are held from where they trade. A fund keeps its blockchain assets with a third-party custodian such as Copper or Fireblocks; the custodian locks a portion of those assets and reports the balance to the exchange, which treats it as tradable so the fund can buy and sell as if it had deposited directly. Profits and losses are then cleared and settled between custodian and exchange at fixed intervals, and Copper runs ClearLoop settlements with connected platforms on set cycles rather than instantly. Interest is building from the smaller end of the institutional market. The 2025 Global Digital Hedge Fund report from AIMA and PwC found 55% of traditional hedge funds held digital assets in 2025, up from 47% a year earlier. Most hold allocations below 2%, and 71% plan to add. Bigger positions make execution, custody and counterparty exposure harder to leave to chance, and hedging tools from lending to crypto options come into play as allocations grow. The appeal of the settlement structure is capital efficiency and less direct exposure to any single platform: eligible collateral stays with the custodian instead of sitting on the exchange, firms trading across several venues avoid shuttling collateral back and forth, and a smaller share of client assets sits directly exposed to platform-level counterparty risk. The sources behind the mechanism are equally clear about what it does not fix. Market risk stays, and a losing position is liquidated wherever the collateral sits. The custodian becomes a counterparty in its own right. Between settlement cycles, profits owed by the exchange are a claim, not custody, and that is where the model gets tested. ClearLoop now connects several venues, among them Coinbase International, Kraken MTF and Deribit, while Fireblocks Off Exchange reaches much the same set. With settlement rails no longer rare, the differentiator between exchanges narrows to how many custody routes they offer and how many of those routes are regulated.

What Concentrated Custody Means for Tokens Like Sui

Our reading: competition between venues now turns on access, liquidity and execution rather than custody, and that matters for assets still building institutional footprints. Sui's camp has pushed on execution and standards, from a live stress test that peaked at 40,614,180 TPS to a 6 billion transaction milestone and an open tokenized asset standard built with OpenAssets. But its tokenomics and market cap depth only convert into institutional flow if venues make holding and settlement painless. The wider altcoin market competes for the same professional capital. Concentration is the counterweight: a few custodians and settlement networks now sit underneath many exchanges at once, so one disruption could touch several platforms simultaneously. Bitget has named six custody and settlement partners; whether that roster is complete or partial as reported, the company has not said.