Xapo Bank
“Can a Gibraltar-licensed, Bitcoin-native private bank become the primary financial institution for high-net-worth Bitcoin holders globally — serving custody, lending, spending, and yield entirely within the Bitcoin standard?”
Founded in 2014 as a Bitcoin cold storage and wallet company for institutional and retail holders. Sold its institutional custody business to Coinbase in 2019 for $55M, freeing capital to pivot into private banking for high-net-worth Bitcoin believers. Secured a Gibraltar bank charter in 2021 — a rare regulated status for a crypto-native institution — and repositioned as a members-only private bank with USD/BTC accounts, Visa cards, BTC-backed loans, and interest products paid in Bitcoin. The embedded finance angle is unusual: Xapo is the regulated bank itself, using third-party infrastructure (TPML for card issuing, BVNK for crypto payments rails) rather than relying on a BaaS sponsor.