Secure Crypto Asset Management for Institutions: A Discussion with Bentzi Rabi, CEO of Utila

I recently spoke with Bentzi Rabi, CEO and Co-Founder of Utila. From a leadership position in the IDF to being a Principal at i3 Equity Partners, Bentzi has a wealth of experience spanning various industry verticals. In our conversation, we delved into the current state of institutional crypto wallets, the problems enterprises face when adopting crypto, and possible solutions. Hope you enjoy.

Welcome, Bentzi. Let’s kick this off with Utila’s origin story and vision.

Sure.

Utila’s journey began with a realization that my co-founder, Sam, and I had after studying, experimenting, and building in the cybersecurity and asset management space for many years.

Enterprises and institutional players are increasingly adopting digital assets like crypto.

Especially since spot BTC ETFs went live and ETH ETFs became more evident than before. For context, we have secured transactions worth $3+ billion in the last six months or so.

But there’s a big gap when it comes to secure, user-friendly, and versatile wallets or asset management infrastructure for these enterprises. They’re forced to rely on providers that are too complex and not flexible enough.

Complicated and lengthy onboarding processes, sub-par UI/UX, steep learning curves are some of the major challenges for institutions trying to manage their crypto holdings efficiently.

This can’t go on. So, we built Utila to offer a secure, no-fuss, self-serving, and all-inclusive wallet platform that understands and meets the demands of enterprise-grade crypto-asset management.

You’ve been a proponent of non-custodial solutions for enterprises. Please explain why and how that’s significant.

We say—not your keys, not your crypto. But so far, we didn’t have the tools to help enterprises adopt and implement this powerful idea efficiently.

Entities with massive holdings have little or no control over their digital assets when working with legacy custodians. This slows them down and increases operational and counterparty risks.

Privacy is also at stake in low-trust, multi-stakeholder environments where institutions mostly operate. Their interactions involve highly sensitive data, and even minor breaches result in tremendous costs—monetary and otherwise.

Scalable, self-custody options, on the contrary, put enterprises in the driving seat. With platforms like Utila, they can enjoy the seamless, hassle-free nature of legacy asset management along with the security and robustness of cryptography, decentralization, etc.

They get autonomy, above all, which is a big competitive edge in today’s world and business scenario.

Did any particular technological development help enable self-custody at scale for enterprises?

Yes, of course.

Solving the so-called Trilemma was a core technical challenge. You couldn’t have security, scalability, and usability at once.

Recently, however, innovations in Multi-Party Computation (MPC) changed the game. We fully capitalized on this opportunity to build Utila.

Using MPC, we found a way to let enterprises generate ‘private keys’ and sign transactions securely without the hassle of Common Line Interface (CLI) and so on.

That handles seamlessness under the hood. But an intuitive frontend was the other key piece in the puzzle. It wouldn’t be possible to build this a few years ago, mainly because we didn’t have developers with the required skill set.

Now, we have talented people and tools to abstract complex mechanisms and create a rich UX/UI for users without giving up critical features. With that, we could combine the best of legacy and novel frameworks.

The outcome: an end-to-end asset management ecosystem for crypto-native enterprises and institutions.

Before we wrap, where do you see institutional crypto adoption in the next 3-5 years? And how would that impact the industry overall?

I’m very bullish and for various reasons.

We, as an industry, are focusing more on the fundamentals than short-term price movements and market dynamics. They’re important markers, no doubt, but there’s much more to blockchain and crypto than speculation. Especially if we want to build sustainable frameworks that last and actually contribute to a better, more equitable world.

Utila, for one, is all about using innovation to redefine how value is created, stored, and transacted at scale. We take this mission very seriously because it can set new standards for the future.

Institutional adoption is super important for crypto’s long-term success. While retail participation is the daily bread and butter, bigger entities help solidify the ground upon which new things are built.

We’re currently in a similar position as Web2 was in the early-2000s. In the next 3-5 years, we’ll see a significant rise in crypto-based mass market use cases. That too, without the downsides of the Web2-led tech boom, i.e., security and privacy concerns, etc.

But to achieve that goal, we must work together instead of against each other. Collaborative innovation is the cornerstone of crypto and Web3’s success.