Singaporean Bitcoin Exchange CoinHako Insures Holdings Through BitGo Partnership

Singaporean-based Bitcoin exchange, CoinHako, has integrated the BitGo digital currency security platform and insurance offering and will now be run with multi-signature wallets and a state-of-the-art platform, and their holdings will be insured against theft and hacks.

The insurance offering is through an undisclosed A-rated insurer from XL Group, which covers up to $250,000 of losses for all BitGo customers. Clients can choose to increase the amount with a 1 percent flat fee. The security firm also provides transparency, improved management controls and internal checks for better monitoring of the exchange’s security.

“We’re excited to have CoinHako’s Bitcoin exchange secured on our platform”, said BitGo CEO Mike Belshe. “The team at CoinHako has been a great development partner, and we fully support their focus on security as one of the core tenets of their business. I’m confident that they will be a great contributor to the Singaporean Bitcoin ecosystem.”

CoinHako

The integration comes just after Pramodh Rai, a former graduate analyst at Barclays Bank joins the young startup as lead developer. In addition, the move is to better secure their platform and holdings as they hope to soon expand throughout Asia.

“Security is of utmost importance, particularly in the wake of recent hacks at Mt. Gox and other exchanges,” said CoinHako CEO and co-founder, Yusho Liu. “We have instituted various measures of security within CoinHako to protect our funds and users. This latest integration with BitGo means our funds are insured against theft and hackers. Moreover, this integration has also enabled us to shift to multi-signature wallets, which is the best industry practice currently.”

Bitgo Entering Asia

CoinHako is the most recent Asian partnership for the security firm. Hong Kong-based Bitspark and South Korea-based Coinone, partnered with Bitgo earlier this month, becoming the firm’s first Asian customers.

BitGo’s insurance and security offering is the only one of its kind, and, according to Belshe, it is in high demand and slowly becoming what is expected out of exchanges.

“The first thing users should do is make sure they are using an exchange that’s backed by the best technology – and using multi-signature wallets like those BitGo offers is one of the key tenets of putting this into practice,” he said.

“Beyond that, insurance will certainly play a growing role in securing crypto financial assets on exchanges and elsewhere,” Belshe added. “BitGo insurance-backed offering remains unique in the market, but demand is ramping sharply and we expect that such programs will soon become a baseline expectation for savvy investors and traders.”