Anchorage Digital

What It Is and the Problem It Solves

Institutional participation in digital assets has long been constrained by a fragmented infrastructure landscape: siloed custodians, unregulated counterparties, and no clear legal framework for safekeeping. Anchorage Digital was built to remove those barriers. Founded in 2017 in San Francisco, the company provides a unified, federally regulated platform where banks, hedge funds, asset managers, corporations, and sovereign wealth funds can hold, trade, stake, settle, and issue digital assets from a single provider.

The defining milestone came in January 2021, when Anchorage Digital Bank National Association became the first crypto firm to receive a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). That charter placed Anchorage Digital Bank on the same regulatory footing as any national bank in the United States, making it an unambiguous qualified custodian — a designation that matters acutely for registered investment advisers and regulated funds required by law to use one.

How It Works

Anchorage Digital organizes its services across three pillars: Prime, Financial Infrastructure, and Stablecoins.

Prime is the custody and trading core. Digital assets are held in segregated accounts — tokens are never pooled, never rehypothecated, and never leave the client vault to generate yield for Anchorage Digital. Security is built on hardware security modules (HSMs) combined with biometric multi-party approval: private keys are never exposed, and no single person can authorize a transaction unilaterally. This architecture traces directly to the backgrounds of co-founders Nathan McCauley (CEO) and Diogo Mónica (Executive Chairman), both patent-holding security engineers who previously held senior security roles at Docker and Square respectively.

Staking is integrated directly into custody. Assets remain in segregated vaults while Anchorage Digital handles validator selection, reward claiming, and auto-compounding. Clients can delegate to Anchorage Digital Bank's own validators, choose from a vetted partner set, or direct staking toward their own operator — all without relinquishing qualified custody. The platform supports staking across more than 20 networks.

Porto by Anchorage Digital extends the security model to self-custody DeFi participation. Porto is an institutional self-custody wallet that uses tamper-proof HSM hardware for private key protection and a proprietary browser extension for direct, secure dApp connection. Multi-party biometric approvals govern every transaction, and signing policies can mirror an organization's internal hierarchy, allowing teams to trade on-chain at market speed without sacrificing compliance controls.

Financial Infrastructure centers on the Atlas settlement network. Atlas provides atomic settlement — assets move only when all conditions on both sides are met — eliminating counterparty exposure on spot and collateral transactions. The network operates 24/7/365, including fiat settlement. As of June 30, 2026, Atlas has over 800 network participants, has settled more than 26 billion USD in volume across 6,000+ transactions, and holds 12.5 billion USD in secured collateral. Participants include Cantor Fitzgerald, FalconX, Wintermute, Galaxy, and Binance. Atlas also supports full lifecycle collateral management and tri-party services for lenders, prime brokers, and DeFi protocols.

Banking services provide USD accounts, wires, and ACH natively from a chartered bank, bridging crypto positions to traditional finance rails without a separate banking relationship.

Stablecoins round out the platform. Anchorage Digital Bank can act as issuer infrastructure for regulated stablecoins — particularly relevant under the U.S. GENIUS Act framework, which established federally chartered banks as the definitive standard for stablecoin issuance. The platform also supports tokenized deposits and a stablecoin correspondent banking layer enabling near-instant cross-border USD stablecoin transfers between financial institutions.

Key Features

• Federally chartered bank custody (OCC), MAS-licensed Major Payment Institution in Singapore, NYDFS BitLicense in New York
• Segregated, non-rehypothecated asset safekeeping with biometric multi-party approval
• HSM-based hardware signing with private keys never exposed in software
• Staking across 20+ networks with automatic reward compounding from segregated custody
• Porto self-custody wallet for direct DeFi access with institutional-grade controls
• Atlas settlement network with 24/7 atomic settlement and full lifecycle collateral management
• Stablecoin issuance, tokenized deposits, and correspondent banking infrastructure
• Fiat banking (USD accounts, wires, ACH) from a chartered bank

Supported Assets

Anchorage Digital supports a broad asset universe selected through a proprietary diligence framework tied to institutional client demand. New assets are added on a regular cadence. The list spans major proof-of-stake networks, leading DeFi tokens, and liquid staking derivatives. Solana (SOL) is supported for both custody and staking.

Security and Regulatory Status

Security is a foundational design principle. Every operation uses HSM-based hardware signing and biometric multi-party controls; private keys are never exposed in software. The OCC national bank charter subjects Anchorage Digital Bank to the same examination, capital, and compliance requirements as any national bank. Singapore operations hold a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). New York operations hold a BitLicense from NYDFS. Digital assets in custody are not FDIC-insured or SIPC-protected, consistent with the treatment of custodied assets at a bank trust company.

Team and Background

Anchorage Digital was incorporated as Anchor Labs, Inc. and is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Porto (Portugal), Singapore, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The company carries a reported valuation of 4.2 billion USD and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, GIC, Goldman Sachs, KKR, Apollo, Visa, Blockchain Capital, and Paradigm. Publicly listed clients include BlackRock, Tether, Cantor Fitzgerald, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), Western Union, and Grayscale.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Anchorage Digital has made Solana a visible strategic priority. The staking platform integrates with Marinade Finance, Solana's leading liquid staking protocol, enabling institutions to access Marinade-managed staking rewards within qualified custody without moving assets off-platform. Marinade co-founder Michael Repetný has cited the partnership as a path to scaling institutional participation across the Solana network.

Porto's dApp directory includes Solana-native protocols, making Anchorage Digital one of the few qualified custodians offering institutions native on-chain Solana participation with full compliance controls. Anchorage Digital also developed Visual Sign, an open-source transaction visualization framework presented at Solana Breakpoint 2025, designed to make complex on-chain transaction data readable for institutional signers before execution — directly addressing the interpretability challenge that has kept institutional teams cautious about on-chain Solana activity.