Anchorage Acquires Banking Charter And Raises $80M

Anchorage acquires banking charter and will practically start its own bank while raising $80 million in series C funding as we can see in today’s crypto news.

Anchorage became the first crypto company to secure a federal banking charter, it closed an $80 million Series C round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Crypto, LUX and Indico, Blockchain Capital, and a16z. As Anchorage acquires a banking charter, it counts former US FED governor Kevin Warsh and hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller as advisors which means it holds other companies’ crypto for them.

Series C investments are for established companies that are looking to scale so they can reach new markets and make acquisitions. Anchorage co-founders Diogo Monica and Nathan McCauley wrote in a post that the money will “help us help institutions participate in new ways.” Monica and McCauley wrote:

 “Being the first national bank places us at the overlap of two systems—the legacy financial system, and the emerging world of digital assets. We’re committed to partnering with a wide range of financial institutions to make it easy and secure to offer crypto services.”

It also wants to bring aboard more institutional clients and companies like Square and Tesla where they both worked together and to get more portions of BTC as well as to add more crypto assets on the menu of options for clients. It now holds 38 different coins from BTC to 0x. Anchorage won a trusted charter back in January from the OCC and since then, it is able to form an “Anchorage Digital Bank.” Just because it can call itself a bank, however, doesn’t mean that it will function like the Bank of America.

Caitlin Long who is the founder of Avanti Bank and Trust said that at the time that OCC trust companies lack access to the Federal Reserve’s payment system, it will limit the traditional services that they can provide.  The real benefit was that the platform became recognized as a qualified custodian of assets by the US SEC and the charter also means that Anchorage doesn’t have to comply with 50 different licenses. The $80 million is really a huge sum for a large crypto startup. BlockFi, for example pulled in $50 million from the 2020 Series C while Coinbase managed to get to $75 million from Series C in 2015.