Google will preview a new crypto custody security system at its first digital assets symposium in New York City on 28 October 2026. The tool, called Google Multi-Party Compute, aims to stop the private-key theft that has already cost the crypto industry billions of dollars (USD).
What actually happened
The product, Google Multi-Party Compute, is in private preview, Google told CoinDesk. Several design partners and major financial institutions are testing it. Parent company Alphabet already uses it to secure its own assets on Ethereum and Solana. Commercial availability is planned for early 2027, but Google has not disclosed pricing. Rich Widmann, director of digital assets strategy at Google Cloud, said regulated institutions adopting blockchains and tokenization 'need scalable, proven infrastructure to secure their clients assets.' Chainalysis found compromised private keys caused 43.8% of crypto stolen in 2024. DeFiLlama data showed $16.69 billion (USD) lost to hacks and exploits as of June 2026, with about 40% tied to private-key compromises. In March, the Resolv protocol lost roughly $25 million (USD) to a compromised private key. In June, Humanity Protocol lost more than $32 million (USD) across 17 wallets, and its token fell more than 80%.
How we got here
MPC is not a new idea in digital assets, and Google is not new to it either. The technique splits a private key into fragments spread across separate systems, removing any single point of failure. In 2023, Google published guidance showing customers how to build MPC-based systems on its Confidential Space infrastructure. Until now, Google has offered general tools like Cloud Key Management Service and Cloud HSM, but no dedicated MPC custody product for digital assets. The new service bundles signing, transaction policy checks and key recovery into one package, arriving as banks increasingly explore tokenized assets, on-chain payments and custody services that require irreversible, securely authorized transactions.
Why this matters for you
For institutions entering crypto, the service offers a ready-made way to avoid building MPC systems from scratch, potentially lowering the barrier to custody tokenized assets. For holders, it could mean fewer large-scale thefts tied to single compromised keys, since no complete key sits in one place. For builders, Google's policy-engine approach, checking transactions against institutional rules before signing, sets a template others may copy. The gap left open is social engineering: a legitimate user tricked into approving a bad transaction can still lose funds, no matter how the key is split.
The bigger question
As institutions adopt MPC to close one security gap, can defenses keep pace with AI-assisted scams and theoretical AI or quantum breakthroughs against the cryptography itself, before either threat becomes real rather than hypothetical?
What to watch
Google showcases the system at its inaugural digital assets symposium in New York City on 28 October 2026, with commercial availability targeted for early 2027. No pricing or named institutions have been disclosed yet. Separately, about 6.9 million bitcoin remain flagged as potentially vulnerable if exposed public keys are ever targeted by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer.
