The Spreadsheet Looked Reassuring At First
I recently reviewed two wallet infrastructure proposals that looked surprisingly close in price. One offered a predictable platform fee. The other appeared cheaper but separated addresses, transactions, compliance checks, supported networks, and additional services into individual line items.
At the company’s current volume, the second proposal seemed like the obvious winner.
Then someone changed one cell in the spreadsheet and multiplied the expected volume by ten. Suddenly, the difference was no longer small. More users meant more addresses, more transactions, more blockchain activity, and more compliance checks — all growing at the same time.
That was when I stopped looking at wallet pricing as a procurement exercise. A wallet infrastructure contract is really a bet on your own growth, and the pricing model decides who benefits when that growth arrives.
Before signing, I would ask three questions.
Question One: What Does The Contract Cost At 10x?
Most companies compare providers using today’s user count because those numbers feel real. Unfortunately, today’s volume is probably the least useful number for a three-year infrastructure decision.
The model should include the expected number of users, addresses per user, supported networks, monthly transactions, average balances, withdrawals, API calls, and compliance checks at the end of year three.
These variables rarely increase independently. A tenfold increase in customers can create far more than a tenfold increase in billable infrastructure activity. One user may require several addresses, use multiple networks, and generate dozens of transactions and screening events.
This is where per-address, per-check, and per-call pricing can begin compounding quietly. The starting fee may look attractive, while the year-three invoice tells a very different story.
The right question is not: “Which proposal is cheaper today?” It is: “What percentage of our revenue will this infrastructure consume if the product succeeds?”
Question Two: Which Line Items Create Bad Incentives?
Anything that is metered will eventually be economised. When API calls are expensive, developers look for ways to reduce them. When customer support is billed by the hour, teams try to resolve more issues internally. In many areas, this behaviour is reasonable.
Compliance is different. If every AML check creates an additional charge, the budget quietly begins competing with compliance coverage. Nobody will explicitly ask the team to screen fewer addresses. Instead, checks may happen less frequently, previous results may be reused for longer, or lower-priority activity may be postponed. That is a poor incentive to build into financial infrastructure.
Before signing, I would identify every metered activity and ask a simple question: “Will our team ever feel pressure to use this feature less often because of its price?”
For security, monitoring, and compliance, the answer should ideally be no.
Question Three: What Is Outside The Contract?
Some of the largest wallet infrastructure costs never appear on the price sheet.
A company may select one provider for wallets, another for AML screening, and a third for liquidity. Each individual service can look competitively priced, but the company still has to build and maintain several integrations.
Someone must reconcile data between the systems, investigate mismatched records, monitor different dashboards, manage several contracts, and decide which provider owns an issue when something breaks between them.
These are seam costs. They appear as engineering hours, operational headcount, longer incident resolution, manual reconciliation, and meetings where several vendors explain why the problem probably belongs to someone else.
The real contract cost therefore includes more than provider fees. It also includes the internal team required to connect, monitor, and maintain everything that sits outside the agreement.
How The Available Models Compare
Once these three questions are answered, the differences between providers become easier to understand. The goal is not to identify one universally “best” platform, but to see which commercial and operational model fits the company’s product.
BitGo provides institutional wallet, custody, transaction-signing, policy-control, and liquidity infrastructure. It reports more than 9.3 million wallets created, support for 1,700+ assets, and $3 trillion in lifetime transactions.
Its modular model suits institutions with complex custody requirements. Buyers should still model transactional charges, monthly minimums, balance-based fees, and possible withdrawal costs at their three-year volume.
WhiteBIT combines business wallets, automatic AML screening, multichain support, fiat operations, and liquidity within one institutional service. Its wallet infrastructure supports 340+ assets across more than 80 networks.
The consolidated model can reduce marginal screening costs and the number of external integrations the company must maintain. Exact commercial inclusions should still be tested against the expected user, transaction, and network growth.
Stripe’s crypto infrastructure connects crypto functionality with its wider payments ecosystem, using Bridge for stablecoin infrastructure and Privy for wallets. It can support wallets, on-ramps, payments, stablecoin movement, and cards.
This may work well for companies already using Stripe. The main question is how pricing, integration, and accountability are divided across the different products involved.
What I Would Put In The Model
Before approving a provider, I would compare every proposal across the same three scenarios:
Current operating volumeExpected volume at the end of year threeA high-growth case above the official forecast
The model should include users, addresses, networks, transactions, AML checks, API calls, balances, withdrawals, provider minimums, integration work, reconciliation, support time, and any third-party services outside the contract.
I would also ask each provider to produce a sample invoice for the expected month in year three. Not a pricing tier called “Enterprise,” but a realistic bill based on actual projected activity. That exercise usually reveals more than another product presentation.
What Became Clear
The best wallet infrastructure price is not necessarily the lowest number on the first page. It is the model that remains understandable when the business becomes much larger than it is today.
The correct choice depends on the custody model, target markets, product requirements, and internal capabilities. But the due-diligence framework remains the same:
Model the contract at 10x. Identify the behaviors its pricing may discourage. Calculate the costs that sit outside the agreement.
The most useful price sheet is the one that shows what success will cost before success arrives.
Disclaimer: This is not financial or investment advice. Do your own research before making any decisions. Use at your own risk.
My Three Questions Before Signing A Wallet Infrastructure Contract was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.