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Case Study: How Onramp Was Selected by a Leading UK Pension Plan After a 69-Manager Search

Selecting a Bitcoin asset manager is categorically different from selecting a manager for equities, bonds, or alternative assets. The evaluation criteria that pension plans and institutional investors apply to traditional asset managers, track record, AUM, fee structure, regulatory status, and operational process, are necessary but insufficient. Bitcoin introduces a new category of risk that has no equivalent in traditional asset management: custodial security. The collapse of Mt. Gox, FTX, BlockFi, and Celsius demonstrated that Bitcoin held with the wrong custodian is not an investment. It is an exposure to operational, counterparty, and fraud risk that can result in permanent loss of capital.

This case study examines the selection process conducted by Cartwright, a prominent UK investment consulting firm serving pension schemes, charities, funeral trusts, corporate treasuries, family offices, and other institutional investor types. Cartwright evaluated 69 asset managers for the right to provide Bitcoin exposure to a leading UK pension plan. Onramp was selected across every material criterion.

The Challenge of Selecting a Bitcoin Asset Manager for Institutional Use

Hurdles for Pension Plans

Pension plans face a distinct set of challenges when allocating to Bitcoin. The asset's volatility and unique characteristics require a depth of conviction and understanding that is often absent in traditional asset management contexts. The regulatory landscape for Bitcoin continues to evolve, creating uncertainty that institutional investors with long-dated liabilities are particularly sensitive to. And the security risks of Bitcoin custody are qualitatively different from those of traditional assets: a pension plan that loses custody of its Bitcoin has no FDIC insurance, no central bank backstop, and no recourse against an immutable blockchain.

Hurdles for Investment Consultants

Cartwright's challenge as an investment consultant was to identify an asset manager that could be trusted with the secure custody and management of Bitcoin on behalf of institutional clients. This required evaluating not just performance and fees, as in traditional manager selection, but deep Bitcoin expertise, custodial architecture, operational risk management, and alignment of interests. The evaluation framework had to assess criteria that have no equivalent in traditional asset management, including multisignature custody, rehypothecation policy, and hard fork governance.

"The selection process for a Bitcoin asset manager cannot rely on the same criteria used for traditional asset management. Custodial architecture, rehypothecation policy, and native multisig are not standard evaluation categories. For Bitcoin, they are the most important ones."

The Evaluation Framework: Criteria That Separate Bitcoin Managers

Cartwright's process covered 69 asset managers through an extensive and rigorous due diligence evaluation. Each manager was assessed across two primary domains: custodial security and operational excellence. The criteria within each domain were designed to identify managers whose Bitcoin-specific capabilities matched the standards required for pension plan stewardship.

Custodial Security: The Foundation of Every Criterion

Bitcoin-Only Focus

Cartwright's evaluation began with a threshold criterion: does the fund manager focus exclusively on Bitcoin? Managers who offer a range of digital assets dilute their expertise and distribute their operational resources across assets with distinct risk profiles, technology stacks, and regulatory considerations. Bitcoin's unique properties, its protocol-level security, its halving cycle, its multisignature architecture, and its 15-year track record of network security, require specialized knowledge that generalist digital asset managers typically do not develop to the same depth.

Onramp is 100% focused on Bitcoin. Every aspect of the platform, from custody architecture to research, lending, estate planning, and client education, is built specifically for Bitcoin. This singular focus allows Onramp to develop the depth of expertise and operational rigor that pension plan stewardship demands, without the dilution of attention and resources that comes with managing multiple digital assets.

Native Multisignature Technology

A critical technical criterion in Cartwright's evaluation was whether managers used Bitcoin's native multisignature technology or alternative approaches such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC). This distinction matters significantly for security. Bitcoin's native multisig is enforced at the protocol level, requiring truly independent private keys to authorize transactions. The cryptographic security of this arrangement is as robust as Bitcoin itself: undermining it would require resources and capabilities beyond those of even nation-state adversaries.

MPC solutions, by contrast, are generally proprietary arrangements that shard a single cryptographic key across multiple parties. They introduce vendor-specific trust dependencies and, at the moment of shard reconstitution to sign a transaction, can reintroduce a single point of failure. Onramp uses Bitcoin's native multisig exclusively, providing a more secure and more transparent custody solution than any MPC-based alternative.

Multi-Institution Custody

Cartwright evaluated whether managers distributed Bitcoin keys across multiple independent, regulated entities rather than concentrating them within a single institution. Onramp's 2-of-3 multisig arrangement distributes keys across Onramp, BitGo, and CoinCover: three independent, regulated institutions with no shared ownership, management, or infrastructure. No single institution has unilateral control over any client's assets. Any movement of funds requires the explicit direction of the client and the cooperation of at least two institutions.

This architecture enforces a system of checks and balances that makes collusion virtually impossible and unilateral malfeasance structurally impossible. Competitors that centralize key management within a single institution, even those using internal multisig, remain single points of failure for the purposes of regulatory action, insolvency, or targeted attack.

Multi-Jurisdictional Key Quorums

An extension of the multi-institution criterion, multi-jurisdictional custody distributes key-holding institutions across distinct legal jurisdictions. Onramp's custodial partners operate across the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, providing regulatory resilience that single-jurisdiction models cannot match. A regulatory action in any one jurisdiction cannot compromise the full custody arrangement because the remaining keys are held under different legal frameworks. This jurisdictional diversification is particularly important for institutional investors such as pension plans that must meet fiduciary standards across multiple regulatory environments.

Hot Storage Limits

Cartwright set a threshold of no more than 5% of assets in hot storage, a fundamental risk control metric. Assets held in internet-connected environments are exposed to cyberattack. The 5% limit ensures that the bulk of the fund's assets remain in offline cold storage while maintaining sufficient liquidity for withdrawals and transactions. Onramp maintains less than 5% of assets in hot storage, with over 95% held offline. Competitors that maintain higher percentages in hot storage increase their vulnerability to cyber threats proportionally.

Individual Client Bitcoin Addresses

Cartwright evaluated whether managers provided each client with a unique, individual Bitcoin cold storage address, or pooled client assets into shared addresses. Individual addresses provide real-time, on-chain verification of holdings that clients can audit independently without relying on manager statements. They also prevent rehypothecation: when assets are individually addressed and legally titled to the client, the manager cannot commingle or lend those assets without the client's direct authorization.

Pooled addresses, by contrast, prevent investors from confirming the authenticity of their specific Bitcoin holdings. They create the conditions for "paper Bitcoin," where client balances are represented by accounting entries rather than verifiable on-chain positions. Onramp provides every client with a unique Bitcoin address, ensuring both transparency and the structural prevention of any practices that could compromise asset integrity.

Operational Excellence: The Standards That Protect Institutional Investors

In-Kind Redemptions

Onramp offers in-kind redemptions, allowing clients to receive actual Bitcoin rather than cash equivalents when withdrawing. This matters for three distinct reasons. First, in-kind redemptions do not trigger taxable events, providing meaningful tax efficiency for long-term holders. Second, they allow clients to change service providers or take direct custody of their Bitcoin without converting through fiat. Third, and perhaps most importantly for institutional due diligence, the ongoing availability of in-kind redemptions functions as a continuous real-time check on the fund manager's practices: an in-kind redemption can only be fulfilled if the Bitcoin is actually in custody. Managers who restrict redemptions to cash equivalents or impose delays on withdrawals create opacity around whether the underlying Bitcoin is genuinely available.

Client Discretion in Hard Fork Events

A hard fork is a significant change to Bitcoin's blockchain protocol that creates two distinct chains and requires all participants to make a decision about which chain to support. Onramp's policies provide clients with full discretion in hard fork events, allowing each client to decide independently whether to support the new chain, retain their original chain position, or split their assets. This aligns with client strategic, ethical, and philosophical preferences, independent of the fund manager's own decision. Competitors with predefined policies that apply uniformly to all clients may force investors into positions inconsistent with their own values or investment thesis.

No Gating Provisions

Gating provisions restrict clients' ability to withdraw assets during periods of market disruption. These provisions are common in traditional alternative asset structures but are particularly problematic for Bitcoin, where market volatility is both common and often driven by exactly the events, exchange failures, regulatory actions, or liquidity crises, that make access to assets most urgent. Onramp imposes no restrictions on asset withdrawals during market disruptions, ensuring clients can access their Bitcoin when they need it most. This commitment to unrestricted access reflects a custody model in which the assets are genuinely available because they are genuinely held.

Bail-In Protections

Bail-in provisions protect client assets from being used to cover firm liabilities. Custodian insolvencies can trigger automatic stays on assets, delaying access and requiring costly litigation for recovery. Onramp's legally sound agreements protect client assets from any such exposure. The distribution of custody across multiple independent entities further reduces insolvency risk: the failure of one custodial institution does not create a stay on assets held by the other two, and in-kind redemption capability allows clients to withdraw their holdings independently of any custodian's financial condition.

No Rehypothecation

Rehypothecation, the use of client assets as collateral for the manager's own transactions, presents elevated risk with a volatile asset like Bitcoin. Onramp does not engage in rehypothecation under any circumstances. Client assets are not commingled, not used as collateral, and not pledged for any purpose other than secure custody on the client's behalf. The combination of individual Bitcoin addresses, no asset commingling, and in-kind redemption availability makes rehypothecation structurally impossible in Onramp's custody model.

Performance-Based Fee Structure

Onramp offers a performance fee-only option, aligning the manager's economic incentives directly with the client's investment outcomes. A performance-based fee structure motivates the manager to prioritize asset protection and appreciation over assets under management. When a manager earns fees only when clients earn returns, their interests are structurally aligned with client interests in a way that flat management fees, which accrue regardless of performance, cannot achieve.

The Outcome: Selected from 69 Managers

In Cartwright's comprehensive search, Onramp was evaluated against 68 other Bitcoin asset managers and selected as the preferred manager across every material criterion. The selection reflects Onramp's position at the convergence of Bitcoin-specific expertise, institutional-grade custody architecture, and operational standards designed to meet the fiduciary requirements of the most demanding institutional investors.

The result demonstrates that institutional-grade Bitcoin asset management is achievable and that the criteria for evaluating it are clear: native multisig custody, multi-institution distribution of keys, multi-jurisdictional protection, individual client addresses, in-kind redemptions, no gating, no bail-in exposure, no rehypothecation, and performance-aligned fees. Onramp meets every standard. For pension plans, family offices, endowments, and other institutional investors evaluating Bitcoin exposure, the Cartwright process provides a replicable framework for identifying the manager whose custody architecture and operational standards match the seriousness of the allocation decision. Contact Onramp to begin that process.

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