Blockstream and Thales keep Bitcoin keys locked inside hardware

Blockstream unveiled a new institutional Bitcoin custody system on Friday, November 13, 2026, built alongside French technology group Thales. The product pairs Thales hardware security modules with Blockstream's own Secure Multi-Party Computation technology, which the company brands Secure-MPC. The pitch to institutions: approve transactions while sensitive key material stays sealed inside dedicated hardware.

The design choice that stands out is where the signing happens. Blockstream says the entire transaction signing protocol runs inside the Thales HSMs, so private keys and MPC key shares never cross the hardware boundary. Instead of a single private key, signing authority is split into shares, and several parties must combine them to produce a valid signature. No single share is enough to move funds.

The system targets custodial banks, prime brokers and other institutional users. It ships with policy controls, segregated accounts, multisignature options and cryptographic audit trails. Blockstream Enterprise supports several signing models, including air-gapped setups and multisignature systems.

The custody launch arrived with more attached. Blockstream's Enterprise custody and tokenization services are in beta with select private clients, a program that opened in Q3 2026. The company walked through the full security architecture the same day at the Digital Assets Forum in New York.

Back co-founded Blockstream in 2014, and the company has stayed Bitcoin-native rather than chasing other chains. Its best-known enterprise product, the Liquid Network sidechain, recently passed more than $3 billion in total value locked. Blockstream also opened a new office in Lugano in late 2026.

Back's argument cuts against the industry's instinct to pile on software layers: fewer moving parts mean fewer openings. He has framed it around AI-assisted cyberattacks that scan code at scale or craft convincing phishing emails, threats that hardware isolation simply doesn't care about. Blockstream's research materials pitch the launch as a way to build trust with institutional investors who hesitated over security concerns.