Why Bitcoin Costs 15 Times More to Store with a Custodian Than Gold

Bitcoin is much more expensive than gold to store with a third-party custodial service, but there’s a good reason for that discrepancy.

On Monday, the Motley Fool published an article analyzing how the cost of storing physical gold bars compares to storing bitcoin — the new “digital gold” with a third-party custodial service. Noting that the SPDR Gold Trust pays approximately 0.08 percent of the value of its gold for storage and custody, the publication found it “mind-blowing” that bitcoin custodial services such as Coinbase Custody charge 15 times more.

As CCN has reported, Coinbase Custody — a regulated storage service targeted to institutional investors making minimum deposits of $10 million — expects to charge a $100,000 setup fee and a 10 basis point (0.10 percent) fee per month on the value of client assets after it launches in 2018.