Robert Liu, a member of the board of Hong Kong-based BitGlobal, spoke to CoinDesk in an interview.
Liu defended Tron founder Justin Sun’s role as an advisor to the project, arguing that the blockchain he founded is trusted by holders of tens of billions of Tether’s stablecoin, USDT.
The business plan for WBTC is to increase the outstanding amount by five to 10 times what is now, just under $10 billion – using a geographically diversified custodial setup that might be more appealing to buyers outside the U.S.
The project is being positioned as a crypto-native alternative to bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
Regarding purportedly more decentralized alternatives to WBTC, he said: “There’s no accountability if something goes wrong. Those people don’t even go by their real names, right? They go by all kinds of strange animal names. Nowadays, I know identifying with the animal is quite trendy in the U.S., right? But at least we go by our real names.”
In August, the mere disclosure that Tron founder Justin Sun was involved in the custody operations related to wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) – a popular token in decentralized finance – was enough to rattle the crypto industry.
At least one major decentralized finance (DeFi) project considered eliminating WBTC completely as a collateral option, and several major crypto players, including the exchange Coinbase, rushed out competing products.
Sun is seen as controversial by some crypto industry analysts, owing to his involvement in various stablecoin projects that turned turbulent, and in other instances where a lack of transparency was cited.
BitGo, the original and longtime custodian of the bitcoin backing WBTC, announced on Aug. 9 that it would distribute control over the project’s custody to three entities globally instead of just one – as a way of helping to decentralize the operation. According to the release, BitGlobal is a global custody platform with regulated operations based in Hong Kong, registered as a Trust and Company Service Provider (TCSP), and is a “a strategic partnership between BitGo, Justin Sun and the Tron ecosystem.”
WBTC is a token that allows investors to use bitcoin (BTC) on other blockchains, and plays a key role in lending DeFi as collateral, with a $9 billion market capitalization.
BitGlobal is now one of three holders of the keys overseeing the bitcoin in custody, project officials have confirmed.
But what if Sun’s involvement is a strength rather than a liability?
This argument was made to CoinDesk this week by BitGlobal director Robert Liu, in an exclusive interview.
What exactly is Sun’s role with the project? And who owns it? We got some clarity, but not total clarity.
This interview that follows has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How did this deal with BitGo come about?
Liu: The conversation started last year. That was shortly after BiGo’s deal with Galaxy fell apart. At the time we were already anticipating the bitcoin spot ETF being given the green light at some point. And , the idea came about that WBTC stands out as an alternative play, almost like a shadow play on the virtual side with the spot ETF. The spot bitcoin ETF is basically the wrapper of underlying bitcoin in a financial ETF structure, right? Whereas this WBTC basically is the virtual wrapper of Bitcoin to be utilized in the DeFi project? So that’s when BitGo was also looking for potential partners to strengthen the WBTC project after the merger deal with Galaxy fell apart. So we put a company together.
Ok, well let’s get to Justin Sun and what his role is. Obviously you were very intentionally transparent in the initial press release about the fact that he was involved. But I don’t know if it’s been clarified exactly what his role is.
Liu: He really was instrumental in making the initial contact with BitGo happen. Myself, obviously, coming from the tradfi space, I personally don’t know BitGo. I know the company, the business model, the significance of WBTC. So just having obviously collaborated with him in the past on some financial transactions. He is instrumental to put together the initial data for myself with BitGo and [BitGo CEO] Mike Belshe. So he plays no other roles than just serving as advisor, strategic advisor, and also helping to basically put together the two teams. There’s no reason to hide the importance of Justin, both in terms of his role in the overall industry, and his influence in in particular in Asia, in the crypto space. He sees the opportunity. But he has no management role within Global Trust, which is a licensed fiduciary platform in Hong Kong. He’s not an employee. He’s not a shareholder. He is not in possession of the keys, which is a focal point in the media, in terms of what it means to have this restructuring, in terms of access to the private keys and how the smart contracts are governed and so on, right? So he has none of those specific, specific roles that some of the unfounded market speculations are suggesting.
To clarify, Robert, you are the CEO of the company?
Liu: I’m actually just director on the board. The CEO, really it’s more of operational and technological project. So we have a CEO who’s got a very diverse background in custody and DeFi. Maxwell Fu is the CEO.
OK, thank you, Robert. And are you the principal shareholder or majority owner of the company?
I’m not. We have six institutional holders, holding the shares of BitGlobal Trust. I’m certainly financially incentivized. But in terms of shareholding structure, it’s all fairly straightforward. Bitcoin is among one of them.
OK, and who are the others?
Liu: There are six others. We can send you the detailed names at a later stage, like later today or later on.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: We did not receive the names later in the day, but CoinDesk’s Sam Reynolds did manage to track down the corporate records from the Hong Kong Companies Registry, showing the names of the institutional shareholders – all with the same number of shares held, and listed with the same addresses in the British Virgin Islands – where information on directors and beneficial owners is not easy to come by. Asked if Sun has any ownership relationship, direct or indirect, to any of the listed shareholders of BitGlobal, a spokesperson told us, “Justin Sun has no direct or indirect involvement on the cap table.”]
Well OK, so regarding Justin Sun, he is obviously is a pioneer in this space, founded the Tron blockchain, and he’s been super successful in a lot of ways. But then a few things have kind of maybe put some question marks in people’s heads. Personally, as an editor, we were writing about the Huobi deal, and he said he was an advisor, and he said he didn’t own it, and then later he acknowledged he a huge percentage of the tokens, so he basically controlled the project. So it didn’t seem like he was being entirely straightforward, and I think stuff like that might be part of the reason for a gap in the trust here from some folks. But so you’re saying he does not have any role besides being an advisor to the project. Is that correct?
Liu: Correct, Brad, I wanted to echo your remarks about Justin a little bit right now. Now, I know you are spot on with Justin’s propensity to attract certain attention for good or bad reason. And I wanted also to highlight his success with the Tron blockchain, because, I’m not gonna really comment on some of the more subjective media coverage of him. But just very objectively, we all know that Tom blockchain is probably the most successful layer-1 blockchain in terms of providing the most successful RWA project to today, which is the USD stablecoin [including Tether’s USDT]. The Tron blockchain has more than 50% of global market share. They have the highest turnover rate. So people have no issue putting more than $60 billion of the stablecoin assets circulating on Tron blockchain. Nobody questioned that, right? I see people try, but then you didn’t go anywhere, right? So then, in terms of Huobi, you know, Huobi is a very touchy feeling project. Because we all know the history in China. It’s highly sensitive. This is not something I personally want to comment on, right? There was a well covered incident of a hack last year. OK, if you Google it, anyone can find that. And personally, what I can tell you is, if not for Justin, the users would be in big trouble, right? So he basically is the reason why the users still feel safe and comfortable. So I think, just purely from my observation of facts, the market should give him the benefit of doubt.
Interesting. I haven’t seen that point made anywhere, but I think it’s a smart one to make. OK, well, let’s just talk about – and this changed right from the initial press release: BitGlobal was going to have two of the keys, and then they changed the structure so they only have one of the keys. Is that correct?
Liu: The plan was to continue to use BitGo U.S. as the hot wallet validation key, they hold that one right? So then BitGlobal Trust, being the custodian, takes two keys, the main key and then the backup key. And that’s actually, almost, mandatory. As a licensed custodian of public assets, we have to demonstrate, and seriously, we have to demonstrate we are in the majority control of the vault, right? Because otherwise we are not a fiduciary. And what if something happens? Whose fault is it? Whoever has two keys, will be at fault, right? So, so that’s for that reason we have to have two keys, compared with, say in the past, before the deal, there are three keys, always BitGo, right? So then what happens, we all know what happened. All kinds of chatter, speculations, FUD, right? And then we had a community call. It was actually very, very helpful that call. A lot of people signed up. Some of the OG’s, who originated the WBTC idea. They hosted the call. They made a bargain plea. Basically, they say, Look it’s too dramatic a change. We have no prior information about this. We don’t know who is BitGlobal Trust. We don’t feel comfortable, right?
We thought about it, and then BitGo proposed that we probably should think about it, because at that time, they offered a very helpful alternative. At the time during much of the time of the restructuring process, right, BitGo did not yet have a license in Asia. They were looking to set up a footprint in Asia. But it was the same month of the announcement, when BitGo Singapore officially gained a license from MAS in Singapore. So that’s what made it possible for us to say, look, OK, so we cannot just give the key to a third party, because one of the community members mentioned that, can we vote credible community members, to hold the key? We’re like, it cannot be, It would be a breach of our fiduciary, and we’re licensed, right? So BitGo volunteered to use BitGo Singapore, newly licensed by MAS. So that this is truly a three-party, all licensed entities, to collectively hold three different keys, right? So now we hold the main key for the wrapping and unwrapping, BitGo validates it, and the backup key sits in a safe location under the custodian of BitGo Singapore.
Alright, and so that arrangement has been approved by the Hong Kong regulator?
Liu: Well, that’s actually within our discretion, and we do have agreement to validate the arrangement by referencing the MAS license, because just like the banks, the banks can put some of their safe deposit in the safe safe box in a licensed security company as well. So something like that was arranged.
Well let’s just talk about the business a little bit. Why is this business attractive? Because, looking at some of the dashboards, the number of BTC that are wrapped has kind of flattened out, right? And it’s widely reported that the revenue comes from the wrapping and the unwrapping. But if you’re stable, there’s no revenue. So what’s the opportunity?
Liu: That was actually the catalyst for BitGo to be willing to talk with someone like us. OK? You’re spot on. Right now, while bitcoin is already surpassed the previous peak in ’21, WBTC is only 50% of where it used to be, right? And then we all know some of the major financial players, like BlackRock. They have gone all in with their spot ETF. So if the ETF offers this type of attraction to the biggest names in the traditional space, it’s a virtual equivalent, WBTC, to us. We want it to grow it. We wanted to not only help it to go back to the previous peak. We want it to go, make it 10 times, if not even a lot more than the current $10 billion, right? That’s number one. Number two, based on our communication within our channel, there are a couple of reasons why WBTC has not been growing. One of the reasons being, the U.S. regulatory contact is not particularly conducive. And you may be aware that nearly 100% of the WBTC comes from international platforms. Okay, so WBTC doesn’t deal with end users directly. They deal with merchants. And virtually 100% of merchants are offshore entities, and they engage offshore users to meet WBTC. But think about it, personally, I don’t see reason for international – the whales, right? To put their WBTC in the vault sitting somewhere in the middle of the U.S., against a regulatory environment that we all know, up until these days, maybe seems to change next year, but so far has not been the case, right? So that’s one of the major holdbacks of WBTC growth potential.
Have you talked about potentially changing that revenue model to where, instead of just fees from going in and out, there might be some kind of a yield so you could get, like, some recurring revenue?
Liu: We’re not thinking of any new revenue model until we grow this thing to at least five to 10 times, OK, and then we would definitely not want to have any exposure to fees that is coming from the circulation side. We are the custodian, and the reason institutions don’t cost certain platforms in a crypto space is, you mix custody with commercial circulation of your assets. We wanted to focus solely on the custodian side. For now our objective is to make it secure, and regulatory compliant, so that the users would feel confident to come back and grow it.
What do you think about all the competition coming into the space, including from some competitors that say they’re more decentralized?
We have the unique competitive advantage here on a couple fronts. Number one, we have a truly diversified jurisdictional and geographic control of the vault and private key, right? No one can compete with that, and that’s very important, until we have a harmonized global regulation. Without that, this is the foolproof setup. There’s no single point of failure. It’s virtually impossible for three different jurisdictions to collude if they don’t like it. So that’s number one. Number two, we strike the right balance between centralized and decentralized. The centralized element is absolutely necessary if you want to grow an important strategic asset like wrapped bitcoin, if you want to grow by scale, you have to have a trusted party to hold billions of multi billions, tens of billions of Bitcoin, right? You cannot. I’m personally not aware of any decentralized project that can just take away your bitcoin and say, trust me, it’s always there, the minute you want it, it’s always there. I am personally not aware of anything like that. On the decentralized front, they say, trust me, right? And just leave your bitcoin with us, and there’s no accountability if something goes wrong. Those people don’t even go by their real names, right? They go by all kinds of strange animal names. Nowadays, I know identifying with the animal is quite trendy in the U.S., right? But at least we go by our real names. And then on the centralized side, compared with [Coinbase’s] cBTC, we’re not subject to a constant subpoena by some government regulator, like in the case of Coinbase, right? They will get the subpoena on any given time in relation to any assets, any clients who onboard with CBTC, right? We don’t have that in Hong Kong, in Singapore. The regulation is very different, very clear cut, very different, right?
