Anchorage Digital: building digital asset infrastructure inside the US banking system

Anchorage Digital Bank NA became the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US in January 2021. That charter is now the foundation for regulated stablecoin issuance under the GENIUS Act, and for a new category of infrastructure that gives AI agents governed access to capital.

 

Digital assets had innovation. What they lacked was a bank.

 

For most of the past decade, institutions that wanted to participate in digital assets faced a structural gap: the technology moved quickly but the infrastructure underneath it was not built to banking standards. Custody, settlement, and issuance largely sat outside federal oversight, which kept the largest pools of institutional capital on the sidelines.

 

Anchorage Digital was founded in 2017 to close that gap. In January 2021, Anchorage Digital Bank NA received a national trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), becoming the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US. That decision, to build inside the regulatory perimeter rather than around it, has shaped everything since, including more than five years of continuous OCC supervision.

 

The GENIUS Act rewarded the institutions already built for it.

 

When Congress passed the GENIUS Act in 2025, it established the first comprehensive federal framework for payment stablecoin issuers, building on existing OCC guidance for national banks. For much of the market, the law set a bar to reach. For Anchorage Digital Bank, it described infrastructure already in operation: bank-grade reserve custody, anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance, and audit-ready financial reporting.

 

Today, Anchorage Digital Bank currently issues stablecoins for partners including Tether (USAT), Ethena Labs (USDtb), Western Union (USDPT), OSL Group (USDGO) and Falcon Finance (fUSD). Because the Bank operates under a federal charter, partners can issue nationally without assembling state-by-state money transmitter licences and can scale beyond the $10 billion cap that applies to state-level issuers.

 

For clients, the practical question the GENIUS Act answers is straightforward: banks, fintechs and payment companies that want a compliant stablecoin program no longer need to spend years building issuance infrastructure. They can launch on rails that federal examiners already supervise.

 

Agentic banking: giving AI regulated access to capital

 

The same logic – regulation as infrastructure – now extends to artificial intelligence. In 2026, Anchorage Digital launched Agentic Banking, infrastructure that lets AI agents transact within a governed framework rather than with open access to corporate treasuries.

 

When an agent reaches the moment of transaction, the platform enforces corporate spending policies, know-your-agent (KYA) identity standards and real-time compliance controls before settlement executes across stablecoins, fiat rails or tokenised credentials. Every action is permissioned, monitored and auditable, so institutions retain oversight and recourse over AI-driven financial activity.

 

“Agentic Banking is the bridge between those two worlds,” said Nathan McCauley, CEO and Co-Founder of Anchorage Digital, describing a system that connects autonomous software to real financial rails with trust and governance built in that handles execution and settlement.

 

The next 250 years of American finance

 

The American financial system has always advanced by bringing new technology under credible rules, from national banking in the 1860s to electronic markets in the 1970s, and beyond. Digital assets and AI agents are following the same path, and the institutions writing that playbook are doing it under federal charters. For institutions deciding when to participate, the infrastructure is no longer the open question. It is operating today, under supervision, at Anchorage Digital.

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Form more infromation, please visit www.anchorage.com