BitGo’s Nick Coombs thinks everyone is reading Africa’s crypto market wrong

In January 2026, BitGo, the United States-based digital asset and Web3 infrastructure company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), joining a small club of crypto-native businesses now exposed to the same scrutiny as banks and publicly listed blue-chip tech companies.

It was the latest signal that crypto firms are no longer fringe experiments, but public businesses that retail investors and pension funds can care about.

Since Coinbase, the largest crypto firm in the US, went public in 2021 and USDC stablecoin issuer Circle delivered its own ‘IPO moment’ in 2025, more digital asset companies have queued up to go public, carving out a new corner of global capital markets.

In comparison, Africa’s digital asset sector is still early. The region has not yet produced its own listed crypto company, but it sits squarely inside this global shift toward regulated, institution-led crypto rails. Nigerian and South African users rank among the world’s most active stablecoin adopters, regulators from Kenya to Rwanda are drafting rules, and capital from the Gulf is circling for ways to participate without inheriting unnecessary risk.

In the middle of that triangle is BitGo MENA, the digital asset company’s Middle East and North Africa arm, and one of the people tasked with turning Gulf interest into actual deals is Nick Coombs, BitGo’s Managing Director of MENA Commercial.

He spent years working in banking and traditional financial services in London, including roles at StoneX, a Fortune 500 global financial services company, and Corpay, a UK‑based corporate cross‑border payments and foreign exchange (FX) provider, before making a move many of his peers considered reckless: leaving a stable career to sell crypto infrastructure.

Today, based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, he leads a team serving clients across the region, from remittance-heavy Gulf markets to African exchanges and fintechs seeking custody vaults, trading rails, and institutional-grade wallet infrastructure.

I spoke with Coombs about risk, stablecoins, regulatory frameworks and what it would mean, a decade from now, for Africans to access institutional-grade infrastructure and the capital to back digital asset growth in the continent’s economy.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

If I called someone who knew you at 15, what would they say about your relationship with risk and money, and how much of that teenager shows up in your work now at BitGo MENA?

At 15, I had a relatively good grasp of financial concepts. I was not a gambler, and I have never been one. I was relatively sensible when it came to money. In other areas of my life, I took more risks. I have always been into extreme sports. I like things like skydiving, and I played a lot of competitive, very intense games, but on the monetary side, I was measured.

That combination still shows up in my work. I am comfortable with calculated risk, but I am very conservative when it comes to how money is handled and safeguarded. When your job is to convince banks and institutions to trust you with their assets, you cannot have a cavalier attitude to risk. You need to understand it deeply and respect it.

I was working in London for a financial services firm when I first came across crypto. I started investing in various assets, and I believe the first one was Ethereum. I quickly noticed the benefits, not just of the asset types themselves, but of the underlying blockchain technology and the impact it could have on different areas, particularly financial services.

I have worked in financial services throughout my career. I started in banking and then moved across different parts of the sector. The tipping point came during COVID-19. Like many people, I suddenly had more time away from the office and more bandwidth to think. I went down a few rabbit holes.

At some point, I had what I would describe as an epiphany. I realised this was what I wanted to do. I became very invested in blockchain technology and could see that it would be a game-changer in many areas, especially financial services. I started looking seriously at the space and came across BitGo. When the opportunity came, I took it.

Moving from a relatively safe career in traditional financial services into the crypto space was certainly a risky move at that time. A lot of my friends in conventional finance in London made that very clear to me. I am glad I did it.

On a good day when everything works as it should, what does your job as BitGo MENA’s head of sales look like from morning to evening?

At a high level, BitGo runs seven licenced entities globally. Each one is a hub for a local region, with its own support team, infrastructure and licences. BitGo MENA was set up in May 2025 when we secured our full licence from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for custody and staking, which is the core pillar of our service offering.

We are seen as an infrastructure provider for any organisation that interacts with crypto. Our client base ranges from small, early-stage startups to some of the largest institutions in the sector.

They use our infrastructure to secure their digital assets in cold wallets or to operate through hot wallets. Alongside that, we offer ancillary tools and products that allow customers to trade, stake, or finance those assets and access other related services on the same platform.

My daily role has two core functions. The first is to maintain and service existing clients: making sure they are looked after, answering questions, helping them understand our products, and ultimately generating more revenue for BitGo MENA by deepening those relationships.

The second is to find new clients who can benefit from our services. That involves daily calls with prospects, presenting what we do and identifying where they need help.

I also lead a sales team. These team members are based in different locations where we see strong potential demand. They do similar work in their markets: building relationships, understanding client needs and connecting those needs to our infrastructure.

You talk a lot about infrastructure. How exactly does BitGo handle custody, especially cold storage, and what is your edge there?

All of our technology is built in-house. We do not use third-party wallet software. BitGo was the world’s first fully regulated digital asset custodian and has been in business for 13 years.

The founders and headquarters are in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, and many of the founding team came from engineering roles at companies like Google and Microsoft. They brought that engineering ethos into the company and built the infrastructure themselves.