Onramp CEO argues bitcoin's corporate custody gap is holding back adoption
In brief
- Onramp CEO Michael Tanguma argued in CoinDesk that bitcoin on a balance sheet is a controls problem.
- Ari Paul accused Coinbase of losing about $25 million of BlockTower's assets; Coinbase denies it.
- Deloitte survey: 42% of 200 CFOs cited accounting and controls complexity as a barrier.
- Onramp sells bitcoin custody, giving its CEO a commercial interest in the argument.
A dispute nobody can check
Tanguma opened with Ari Paul's public accusations against Coinbase. The BlockTower Capital founder accused the exchange of losing roughly $25 million of his firm's assets and of concealing hacks totaling more than $1 billion across a dozen institutions. Coinbase denied the allegations. Paul said active litigation prevented him from publishing his evidence.
Tanguma's argument is that nobody outside the two parties can check either version.
Where the controls go
He wrote that the moment a business buys bitcoin, normal account governance gets replaced by either a single exchange login or a hardware wallet. Self-custody concentrates risk on one person. Exchange custody concentrates it on one company.
He pointed to QuadrigaCX, whose chief executive died in 2018 holding the only keys (roughly $190 million in customer assets were lost, as the Ontario Securities Commission documented). Prime Trust found in December 2021 that it couldn't open its own legacy wallets, and it still couldn't 18 months later when Nevada moved to put it into receivership.
Boards are asking blunt questions, according to Tanguma: who can move the asset, who approves the movement, and what happens if the credential holder quits, gets phished or dies. He said companies that wanted bitcoin on their balance sheets have walked away at exactly that point.
The numbers he leans on
In a Deloitte survey of 200 CFOs at billion-dollar companies, 42% cited the complexity of accounting and controls as a barrier, within one point of price volatility.
The risk isn't only digital. Jameson Lopp's public tracker logs more than 360 known physical attacks since 2014, including 86 in 2025 and more than 60 so far in 2026.
Coinbase made that concrete last year, Tanguma noted, when criminals bribed its support staff and stole customer data including names, addresses and balance information. The company estimated the breach could cost $400 million, and security researchers called it a wake-up call because stolen account data exposes holders to real-world coercion. He added that AI has industrialized these attacks through cloned voices, convincing phishing emails and social engineering.
His conclusion: the industry's existing custody models concentrate risk instead of distributing it, and that's what boards don't want to sign off on.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Onramp's CEO call corporate bitcoin a controls problem?
Michael Tanguma argued that when a business buys bitcoin, normal account governance is replaced by a single exchange login or a hardware wallet. Boards then ask who can move the asset, who approves it, and what happens if the credential holder quits, gets phished or dies.
What data did the op-ed cite on corporate hesitation?
It cited a Deloitte survey of 200 CFOs at billion-dollar companies in which 42% named accounting and controls complexity as a barrier, within one point of price volatility. It also cited Jameson Lopp's tracker of more than 360 known physical attacks since 2014.
Did Coinbase lose BlockTower's assets?
That hasn't been established. BlockTower founder Ari Paul publicly accused Coinbase of losing roughly $25 million of his firm's assets, and Coinbase denied it. Paul said active litigation prevented him from publishing his evidence.
