BitGo Bank & Trust, N.A. has expanded access to Lido staking for eligible U.S. clients, allowing customers to stake Ether and hold the resulting stETH through their existing BitGo accounts. According to the official Lido announcement, clients can stake ETH, custody the resulting stETH and redeem it back into ETH through the same BitGo environment. The rollout extends a service first introduced for BitGo customers in Europe and Asia in July 2025.
The integration places Lido access inside an institutionally oriented custody workflow rather than requiring clients to interact separately with the protocol. BitGo Bank & Trust is an OCC-chartered national trust bank, and BitGo states that staking from custodial wallets is provided through that banking entity. The arrangement reduces operational steps for eligible U.S. holders while preserving stETH as the liquid representation of their Lido staking position.
BitGo Keeps the Staking Lifecycle Inside Custody
Once ETH is committed through the integration, clients receive stETH and can monitor that position from BitGo’s interface. Because stETH remains transferable, holders retain greater flexibility than with ETH locked directly in individual validators, while BitGo also supports redemption back into ETH through the platform. The operational advantage is integrated custody and staking management, not a removal of Ethereum’s underlying staking mechanics or risks.
That distinction matters for institutions increasingly seeking yield from ETH treasuries. Corporate holders such as BitMine have already made staking a significant component of institutional Ethereum treasury management, while Ethereum developers are separately exploring DVT-Lite to simplify institutional validator deployment. BitGo’s Lido integration provides another route: outsourced liquid staking combined with regulated custody rather than operating validator infrastructure directly.
The custody wrapper does not eliminate protocol-level exposure. Lido identifies smart-contract vulnerabilities, validator penalties or slashing and stETH liquidity or price deviations as potential risks. A recent MetaMask Staking infrastructure incident triggered precautionary exits of Lido validators, illustrating how node-operator risk can remain distinct from both custody and Ethereum consensus. Institutional custody changes who manages the assets and workflow, but Lido staking still introduces risks beyond simply holding unstaked ETH.
Lido Expands Into Institutional Distribution
The U.S. rollout arrives as institutional participants account for a growing share of Ethereum staking. Lido reported that its own share of total staked ETH fell from 23.93% at the start of 2026 to 21.18% at the end of June even as its stake increased to 9.13 million ETH. The decline reflected faster growth elsewhere, particularly among custodians, exchanges and institutional holders. BitGo gives Lido a new distribution channel into precisely the segment where the protocol has been losing relative market share.
More recent Rated Network data continues to place Lido around 21.1% of active Ethereum stake, with more than 9.1 million ETH associated with its validator pool. Meanwhile, DeFiLlama currently values Lido’s Ethereum staking position at roughly $25 billion. Those figures establish substantial scale, but neither TVL nor staked ETH alone measures how much demand the new BitGo service will generate among U.S. clients.
For BitGo, the integration extends a broader institutional strategy combining regulated custody with access to yield-bearing and onchain financial products. The company has already expanded staking and custody relationships with asset managers including 21Shares while adding other yield-oriented digital assets to its platform. The measurable development today is therefore distribution infrastructure: eligible U.S. clients can now access Lido staking without moving outside their existing BitGo custody workflow, while actual adoption will depend on ETH committed through the service and recurring institutional use.