Mike Belshe, born in 1971, is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He's the co-founder and CEO of BitGo. He also co-founded Lookout Software in 2004, co-invented SPDY protocol, and is one of the principal authors of the HTTP/2.0 specification. He is also an inventor with over 10 technology patents. ^[1][2][15]

Education

Mike Belshe attended the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. He was voted the Faculty's 'Computer Science Senior of the Year' in 1993. ^[1]

Career

In 1993, Mike started his career as a Software Engineer at Hewlett-Packard (HP) and worked there until 1995. He then moved to Netscape Communications Corp., to work as a Software Engineer until 1997. ^[1]

"Netscape was a 180 degree turn away from what I’d been doing at HP. It was pure chaos, but for an ambitious developer, it opened my eyes to the unlimited potential of software. I had my official role, but I also spent a lot of time researching and prototyping ways to make web servers better and faster."

"The work we did at Netscape was fast and furious. Many of the original UIUC team were now at Netscape, and all of us were in our 20s. The code they had written as college students, and now as first time professional software engineers, was beginning to have an impact on mainstream culture and continues to do so to this day." - Mike Belshe sharing his journey on his website^[10]

In 1997, Mike worked as Director of Engineering & VP of Applications at Remarq, which was acquired by Critical Path, until 2001. He then joined Good Technology and served as the Director of Engineering until 2003. ^[1]

In 2003, Mike Belshe co-founded Lookout Sofware, an Email search company alongside Eric Hahn. The company was acquired by Microsoft Corporation in 2004 and Mike was recruited as a Software Engineer & Development Manager of the organization. ^[1]

Joining Google in 2006, Mike was one of the early hires where he served as a Staff Software Engineer on the Google Chrome team. As part of the Chrome team, he worked on protocol research and later co-authored the SPDY protocol, an obsolete open-specification communication protocol developed for transporting web content. ^[9]

He submitted SPDY to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) in 2011 and was an author of HTTP/2.0, a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. As part of the IETF standardization effort, Mike argued for encryption by default within the protocol. ^[9][2]

"I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on a lot of high impact products. I joined Netscape just as the Internet–web 1–was being born. I quickly became an expert in the inner workings of the Internet and its protocols, and it changed everything in my career.

Fast forward a few years and a few great start-ups later, and I was one of the first ten engineers on the project that would become Google Chrome, the web development platform that enabled web 2. Now, with BitGo, I’m building for web 3." - Mike stated on his website^[10]

BitGo

In 2011, Mike Belshe co-founded BitGo and became its CEO. BitGo is a digital asset custody and security company. In 2021, it was acquired by Galaxy Digital for $1.2 billion. BitGo offers regulated custody, borrowing and lending, and core infrastructure to investors and builders alike.^[3] Mike's prior work in BitGo involved creating the world's first multi-sig web wallet for Bitcoin. ^[4]

After pioneering the multi-signature wallet, BitGo later built the Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS) to improve upon other companies' Manufacturing Planning and Control (MPC) offerings. Between multi-sig and TSS, BitGo offers safe technology and safeguards over 600 tokens across a wide variety of blockchains. ^[2]

BitGo launched BitGo Trust Company in 2018, providing fully regulated, qualified cold storage to complement BitGo Inc.’s original hot wallet solution. In April 2020, BitGo acquired Lumina, a comprehensive, institutional-grade financial platform for managing digital assets. ^[14]

"With the acquisition of Lumina, we introduce the next generation wallet platform: welcome BitGo Portfolio & BitGo Tax." - Mike announced in the press release ^[14]

In July 2023, Mike Belshe announced the launch of the Go Network – BitGo’s institutional platform for custody, and settlement of USD and digital assets in real-time, 24/7. Although the Go Network has been growing in functionality since October 2022, Mike stated in an interview that it takes time to bring various market participants together and figure out how to conduct settlements and that process started happening in 2023. ^[11][12]

"BitGo is addressing fiat concentration risk in banks by way of building on-ramps as a silvergate exchange Network. It's a post-trade replacement but it's better. Instead of being Fiat based, it's Fiat plus crypto delivering full delivery versus payment (DVP) as you would expect"^[13]

Events

Mike Belshe attended:

• Consensus 2017, New York, United States, as a Speaker on May 22, 2017.
• Bitcoin 2022, Florida, United States, as a Speaker on April 6, 2022.
• Consensus 2022, New York, United States, as a Speaker on June 9, 2022.^[4]
• Speaker Spotlight Mainnet 2023, New York, United States, as a Speaker for BitGo on September 20-22, 2023.^[4]