Anchorage Raises $40 Million Series B Led by Blockchain Capital, Visa

Diogo Mónica and Nathan McCauley

At Anchorage, our mission is to advance institutional participation in the digital asset class. We’ve started with solving the biggest problem facing our industry: making it safe for institutions to hold and use crypto. Since starting down this path in 2017, we’ve built the most secure digital asset custody solution on the market, and on-boarded some of the leading institutional investors in the space as clients, including Blockchain Capital, Polychain, Paradigm, and a16z crypto.

Today we’re proud to share that Anchorage has raised a $40 million Series B to accelerate the growth of crypto finance. We’re committed to working with investors who will be strategic partners in advancing our mission, which is why this round was led by Blockchain Capital, the leading venture capital firm dedicated to innovations in blockchain. Blockchain Capital has deep expertise in crypto custody, not just as a VC investor but also as a customer.

“We believe Anchorage is the safest place to hold digital assets, having modernized crypto custody beyond physical cold storage with advanced security engineering,” said P. Bart Stephens, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Blockchain Capital. “As our industry evolves, a growing number of crypto networks will depend on asset holders’ active participation in staking and governance. Anchorage’s next generation custody solution is ideally positioned to help investors keep up with the future direction of crypto networks. We are leading this investment because we believe Anchorage will have a transformative impact on the financial world.”

Alongside Blockchain Capital, we’re excited to welcome Visa as an investor as well. As a custodian, our work is focused on building financial plumbing that other companies depend on for their operations to run smoothly. In this regard we have always looked at Visa as a model: Visa was “fintech” before the term existed, and has long been on the vanguard of financial infrastructure.

“This investment is consistent with Visa’s global strategy to partner with and invest in emerging fintech companies,” said Terry Angelos, SVP and Head of Fintech at Visa Inc. “We’re pleased to add Anchorage to our growing investment portfolio.”

The best is yet to come. We will use this funding to continue helping our clients achieve their goals by investing in:

• Support for all assets
  Custodians shouldn’t dictate their clients’ portfolios by limiting what assets they can hold. Our goal is to support all assets that meet our standards of quality and safety, so that our clients can build their desired portfolios no matter what their investment thesis may be.
• Enabling participative features
  Clients expect more than just safekeeping from their custodian. Traditional asset custodians enable clients to generate yield and participate using the assets they hold: for example, by collecting stock dividends and bond coupon payments, and facilitating shareholder voting. In the same vein, Anchorage is committed to helping our clients get the most out of their assets, whether by capturing returns from staking and inflation, or participating in on-chain governance.
• Unlocking financial services beyond custody
  For too many investors, custody is a barrier to action: transfers are painful and slow, and custody is disconnected from other service offerings. We believe custody should integrate with a full menu of financial services, so investors can operate with the least friction possible.

We are grateful to the entire Anchorage community — our team, partners, investors, and clients — for sharing our vision and helping us open digital assets to greater institutional investment. We’ve made great strides in the last year, and we couldn’t be more excited for what lies ahead.

If you’d like to learn more about Anchorage, please get in touch.

Services are offered either through Anchorage Hold LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and registered Money Services Business, or Anchorage Trust Company, a South Dakota-chartered trust company. Anchorage Hold and Anchorage Trust Company are not registered with the SEC. Services are not yet offered to residents of New York. Anchorage Hold and Anchorage Trust Company do not engage in the offer or sale of securities or digital assets, and do not provide legal, tax, or investment advice. Anchorage Hold LLC and Anchorage Trust Company are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Anchor Labs Inc., a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California.