Galaxy Digital Adds NYDFS-Chartered Fireblocks Trust to Bitcoin (BTC) Custody Lineup

Galaxy Digital Expands Custody Network

Galaxy Digital (GLXY) has brought Fireblocks Trust Company on board as an additional regulated custodian for its institutional digital-asset clients, widening a custody network that already includes Bakkt Trust, Gemini and Fidelity Digital Assets. The addition was set out in an announcement dated October 8, 2025, in which Fireblocks confirmed that Galaxy Digital has become a client of its New York-regulated trust entity, joining Bakkt, Castle Island and FalconX on the custodian's client roster.

Fireblocks Trust Company holds a limited purpose trust charter granted by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) in August 2024, and the regulator's public register lists the entity under its Limited Purpose Trust Charter designation from that same month. That charter is the legal foundation allowing a digital-asset firm to perform custody functions inside New York's state regulatory perimeter.

Galaxy's disclosed custody policy states that assets belonging to asset-management clients are held with third-party qualified custodians, with a multi-custodian model applied where possible — the company does not operate qualified custody in-house. Acting chief operating officer Andrew Taubman said in the announcement that Galaxy relies on several regulated custodians to meet the differing requirements of its institutional client base, and that Fireblocks Trust Company adds a capability supporting safe, compliant growth in the digital-asset market.

The two Fireblocks entities play distinct roles: the technology firm provides MPC-based infrastructure, while the trust company is the regulated corporation that actually safeguards assets under New York rules. MPC — multi-party computation — splits a private key into separate shares so that no single location ever holds the complete key. Galaxy had already connected to the Fireblocks network in July 2025 to give institutional clients access to its staking services; whether that earlier arrangement extends to the new trust-company contract has not been confirmed. The specific tokens covered by the agreement and the scale of assets involved remain undisclosed.

OKX Ships Pre-IPO Perpetuals in Europe

While custody plumbing deepened on the storage side, OKX pushed the trading frontier in Europe. The exchange has launched pre-IPO perpetual futures tied to OpenAI and Anthropic, letting eligible European traders take long or short positions of up to 10x leverage on the two private companies' valuations — without holding any of their shares. Perpetual futures, the contract format that crypto-native venues such as Hyperliquid popularized, carry no expiry date; positions stay open through periodic funding payments that keep the contract price anchored to its reference. Wrapped around pre-IPO equity, the format lets qualified traders bet either way on companies whose shares are not listed anywhere yet.

Pre-IPO exposure has traditionally been the preserve of venture funds and secondary-market buyers, channels closed to most retail participants; a leveraged perpetual wrapper moves that exposure onto an around-the-clock derivatives order book instead. Access is gated to qualified traders in Europe, and the products are framed explicitly as a way to trade expectations for how OpenAI and Anthropic will be valued ahead of any public offering. Because the contracts settle inside the exchange's margin system rather than through share transfer, they sit firmly on the derivatives ledger, distinct from any spot equity listing should one ever follow.

For a crypto exchange, listing equity-linked derivatives on two of the most closely watched private AI firms marks another step in the convergence of digital-asset market infrastructure with traditional finance — a convergence that has already drawn traditional asset managers such as Blackstone deeper into alternative assets. It also lands in a market where counterparty quality matters: venues competing for this flow are ranked closely on regulation, product depth and safeguards in trackers like our Best Crypto Exchanges guide. No launch volumes or open-interest figures were disclosed alongside the announcement. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Institutional Rails Keep Widening

Read together, the two moves trace one arc from opposite ends. Galaxy Digital is hardening the storage layer, giving institutions another NYDFS-chartered place to hold Bitcoin (BTC) and other major tokens, while OKX is stretching the trading layer, wrapping private-company equity exposure in crypto-native derivatives. Neither disclosure carries a headline figure — no asset totals for the Fireblocks contract, no volumes for the new futures — and FUD around counterparty risk tends to fill exactly those information gaps. What both confirm is direction: regulated custody and equity-crypto crossover products are becoming standard institutional infrastructure, and the next data points worth watching are the undisclosed asset flows behind each.