Custodian — The Qualified Custodian requirement under the Investment Advisers Act is the single most consequential regulatory fact in institutional digital asset custody. Investment advisers managing client assets — hedge funds, family office advisers, RIAs — must hold those assets with a Qualified Custodian: a bank, savings association, registered broker-dealer, registered futures commission merchant, or foreign financial institution meeting specific standards. The OCC national bank charter that Anchorage Digital received in January 2021 is the highest possible Qualified Custodian credential in the United States — the same charter held by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America. No other crypto-native institution holds it.
Overview
Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. was founded in 2017 by Diogo Monica and Nathan McCauley — both former members of Square’s security team — with the thesis that institutional digital asset adoption would be gated by the availability of institutional-grade custody infrastructure meeting the same regulatory standards as traditional bank custody. The firm built its custody technology and compliance infrastructure for four years before applying for an OCC charter in 2020.
The OCC national bank charter approval in January 2021 was a regulatory landmark. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which charters and supervises national banks under the National Bank Act, evaluated Anchorage’s capital adequacy, management capability, compliance systems, technology infrastructure, and business plan against the same standards applied to traditional bank charter applications. The approval signaled that the OCC considered digital asset custody a legitimate banking activity and that Anchorage had demonstrated the operational maturity to conduct it under federal bank supervision.
The charter has concrete practical implications that state-chartered crypto custodians and trust companies cannot match. A nationally chartered bank operates under a single set of federal regulations — Office of the Comptroller of the Currency supervision, Federal Reserve oversight, FDIC deposit insurance eligibility — rather than the patchwork of state-by-state licensing requirements that state-chartered institutions must navigate. For an institutional client seeking custody in multiple states, Anchorage’s federal charter provides a single regulatory relationship rather than a compliance matrix across 50 jurisdictions.
The technology foundation is MPC — Multi-Party Computation. Unlike multi-signature schemes (which require multiple parties to sign transactions using their individual private key shares, with each share stored in a specific location), MPC-based custody distributes the key generation and signing process across multiple secure enclaves in a way that no single enclave holds a complete key at any moment. Anchorage’s MPC implementation uses geographically distributed secure enclaves, with transaction authorization requiring multi-party consensus across those enclaves under a programmable policy engine. The result: there is no single point of failure in the custody infrastructure, and no single point of compromise that could expose client assets.
The client base reflects Anchorage’s institutional focus: sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds (including crypto-native funds and traditional hedge funds adding digital asset allocations), family offices, corporate treasuries, and — importantly — other banks. Several US banks that want to offer digital asset services to their own clients without building internal custody infrastructure have engaged Anchorage as their back-of-house custody provider, essentially white-labeling Anchorage’s federally chartered custody under their own brand. This bank-to-bank use case is a commercially significant revenue stream that is uniquely available to a federally chartered institution.
Anchorage’s product suite has expanded beyond custody to include trading (agency execution desk), staking (earning protocol rewards on proof-of-stake assets held in custody), governance (voting on behalf of clients in on-chain governance proposals), and lending (collateralized lending against digital asset custody positions). Each of these services is built on the custody relationship, creating revenue streams that improve the economics of the core custody business.
The Series D funding round — $350 million in 2021 — brought in investors including a16z, Goldman Sachs, and Visa. The Goldman Sachs participation is particularly notable: one of the world’s largest institutional banks investing in a crypto custody startup signals the institutional validation that the federal charter represented. Visa’s participation reflects interest in the potential for digital asset custody to integrate with payment infrastructure.
Key Metrics
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Assets Under Custody | $50B+ (2025) |
| OCC Charter Received | January 2021 |
| Charter Type | OCC National Bank Charter |
| Founders | Diogo Monica, Nathan McCauley |
| Custody Technology | MPC (Multi-Party Computation) |
| Series D Raise | $350M (2021) |
| Key Investors | a16z, Goldman Sachs, Visa |
| Products | Custody, Trading, Staking, Governance, Lending |
| Client Types | Sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, banks, family offices |
| HQ | San Francisco, California |
Tokenization Activity
Anchorage’s custody services for tokenized real-world assets have grown with the RWA market. As BlackRock BUIDL, Hamilton Lane SCOPE, and other tokenized fund products accumulate AUM, the institutions holding those positions need Qualified Custodians. Anchorage’s OCC charter makes it the cleanest regulatory choice for investment advisers whose compliance programs require Qualified Custodian status at the federal bank charter level.
The staking service has grown as Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake in 2022 made staking yields available on custodied ETH positions. Anchorage enables institutional clients to earn staking rewards on ETH held in custody without moving assets off Anchorage’s infrastructure — eliminating the counterparty risk that would arise from delegating stake through a third-party staking provider. This service is particularly relevant for institutional clients building yield strategies around their digital asset allocations.
The governance service — voting in on-chain governance proposals on behalf of institutional clients holding governance tokens — represents a novel fiduciary service with no equivalent in traditional asset management. As DeFi protocols and blockchain networks make significant decisions through on-chain governance (fee structures, protocol upgrades, treasury allocations), institutional holders of governance tokens need an agent who can vote consistently with their fiduciary obligations. Anchorage’s governance voting service fills this gap.
Investment Relevance
Anchorage’s OCC charter creates a regulatory moat that no competitor can quickly replicate. OCC charter applications require years of preparation and regulatory dialogue, capital commitments, and demonstrated management capability — a barrier that keeps the federally chartered crypto bank market effectively restricted to Anchorage as of early 2026. This moat is durable: even well-capitalized competitors like BitGo and Coinbase Custody operate under state charters rather than federal bank charters, placing them at a regulatory disadvantage for clients whose policies require federal bank Qualified Custodian status.
The bank-to-bank custody model — where Anchorage provides white-labeled custody for other banks — represents a B2B revenue stream that scales with the number of banks offering digital asset services without building internal infrastructure. As US banks respond to customer demand for digital asset services, this custody-as-a-service model could become a significant revenue contributor.
Related Entities
- BNY Mellon Digital — Competing Qualified Custodian for institutional digital assets
- BitGo — Primary competitor in dedicated crypto custody
- Coinbase Prime — Competitor with exchange-integrated custody
- OCC — Charter-granting regulator; ongoing federal supervision
- Fireblocks — Digital asset transfer infrastructure complementing custody services