The charter, stated precisely
On 13 January 2021 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced conditional approval of the conversion of Anchorage Trust Company, a South Dakota chartered trust company, into Anchorage Digital Bank, National Association. The regulator is the OCC, the instrument is a national trust bank charter, and the approval carried an enforceable condition: an operating agreement setting capital and liquidity requirements and the OCC's risk management expectations.
The approval letter fills in the corporate shape. Anchorage Trust was chartered by South Dakota in 2019, and it was a wholly owned subsidiary of Anchor Labs, Inc., a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Francisco. Anchorage Digital Bank remained a subsidiary of Anchor Labs after conversion. The company's own material gives 2017 as its founding year.
A national trust bank does not take deposits and is not FDIC insured. What the charter buys is a single federal supervisor for custody and fiduciary activity, in place of a patchwork of state licences.
On the record
On 21 April 2022 the OCC issued a consent order against Anchorage Digital Bank, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The stated basis was "the bank's failure to adopt and implement a compliance program that adequately covers the required Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) program elements", which the OCC treated as a violation of the operating agreement it had imposed as a condition of the charter. That is a supervisory finding about a compliance programme. It is not a finding of fraud, and none was made.
The order was terminated on 18 August 2025 by order AA-ENF-2025-44, the OCC recording that the bank's safety and soundness and its compliance with law no longer required the order to continue. Chief executive Nathan McCauley wrote about the termination three days later.
The company states that it also operates Anchorage Digital Singapore, licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Anchorage Digital NY, which holds a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services. Listing here is not endorsement.