2020 in Hindsight

“In our lifetimes, we’ve seen wars. We’ve seen floods, fires, and hurricanes. We’ve even seen epidemics. But this is different. This is a pandemic. It is global in scope, and it seems to have touched nearly every facet of life for millions. People are scared. The markets are shaken. And crypto has not been immune.”

The above is an excerpt from a piece we published on March 24th of this year, soon after the city of San Francisco, where Anchorage headquarters were located, locked down. It wasn’t that long ago, but there’s a qualitative difference in those few lines, written some eight months ago, and the way we’re feeling about the future today.

A lot of the things are still true. Though crypto has more than rebounded from its March lows and vaccines are rolling out as we type, we’re still in the grips of a global pandemic. Even so, 2020 has really been about overcoming challenges the likes of which we could not have imagined when we were toasting the future at our holiday party in 2019. It has been about resilience — in crypto, in the markets, in our team, and as a society. And it has been about growth, in spite of everything.

2020 has been a year of remarkable transformation for Anchorage as a company. More than growing in terms of numbers, Anchorage has experienced a real metamorphosis, changing from the leader in digital asset custody, to the premier digital asset platform for institutions, building infrastructure and financial services for the future.

We’re incredibly proud of what our team has been able to accomplish, despite the many significant obstacles this year has brought. Here are just a few of the highlights:

Launched Anchorage Trading

From the beginning, our mission has been to advance institutional participation in the digital asset class. We entered the market as the most advanced crypto custodian for institutions, soon after enabled staking and governance services, and in January of this year launched Anchorage Trading. With Anchorage Trading, institutions can buy and sell assets directly from custody, across a variety of trading venues, without having to deal with multiple onboardings or the hassle and security risk of pre-funding trades on exchange. Alongside that launch, we also announced our acquisition of Merkle Data, welcoming a leading provider of risk and data solutions for crypto institutions to our team. Read more in TechCrunch, Coindesk, and The Block.

Grew Our Leadership Team

2020 has been a year of constant growth for Anchorage. Our executive leadership team, in particular, added four new members: Geoff Clauss, Head of Sales, joined us from Addepar. Julie Veltman, Head of Finance, came to us via Salesforce. Jennifer Liu, our New York GM, joined us from LedgerX. And Georgia Quinn, General Counsel, came over from CoinList. As we continue to grow our product offerings and move into new markets, individuals like these will be instrumental in leading the charge. Read more in Nasdaq and Bloomberg Law.

Opened an Engineering Hub in Porto, Portugal

It’s one thing to open an engineering hub half a world away, and it’s another to do so in the throes of a global pandemic. We’re incredibly proud of our team, who worked tirelessly to make it happen. Adding the team in Portugal has already vastly improved our ability to meet the increasing demand for products and services we continue to see. And as an emerging leader in the European tech sector with deep security expertise and a warm and vibrant culture, Portugal has been a natural fit for Anchorage. Read more in Forbes. (And if you’re an engineer, product manager, or engineering manager in Portugal, we’re hiring.)

Brought Secure, Scaled Access to Capital with Anchorage Financing

Institutions have long been wary of moving crypto outside of custody. When it comes to using crypto as collateral to obtain a line of credit, this concern is amplified. This year, Anchorage Financing solved that problem, allowing institutions to obtain, draw on, pay back, and monitor the lines of credit that they need, without assets ever needing to leave the security of Anchorage Custody. This has opened up numerous opportunities in a variety of use cases — from enabling funds to unlock opportunistic trading benefits by drawing on lines of credit, to helping market makers meet seasonal demand for cash based on market dynamics, and letting miners maximize profit through sophisticated, rule-based reward management. Read more in Forbes and Finance Magnates.

Enabled Two Financial Firsts

Together with Tokensoft, this year, Anchorage worked to bring secure and compliant SEC-registered security offerings to the blockchain. Through this integration, institutions can now purchase SEC-registered security tokens issued through Tokensoft, and custody those assets securely with Anchorage, mirroring the same kind of seamless user experience in the world of traditional finance. The first two tokens supported through this partnership both broke new ground for finance, with ArCoin being the first SEC-registered digital security issued on the blockchain, and INX token representing the first SEC-registered IPO for a security token. As more and more traditional financial players enter the space, we look forward to supporting their abilities to support these new kinds of securities. Read more in Forbes, Coindesk, and Modern Consensus.

Expanded Our List of Supported Assets

At Anchorage, it has always been our goal to support every asset that meets our standards for quality and security. Toward that end, our list of supported assets expanded quite a lot this year, with more than 20 assets added. Some of the most notable were those we were able to support ahead of launch, like Celo and Filecoin, and assets like Oasis ROSE for whom we were named exclusive custody provider. We also threw our support behind DeFi, listing a significant number of DeFi tokens. In 2021, we look forward to continuing to build, working with exciting protocols pre-launch, and supporting all the assets that meet our standards and that institutions demand.

Brought Layer One Protocols to Ethereum

Speaking of DeFi, this year also saw us launch Wrapped, a joint service offering together with Tokensoft, that bridges layer one protocols with Ethereum. Starting with Zcash, Filecoin, CELO, and cUSD, Wrapped is working to increase liquidity in the DeFi space, as well as enable institutions to benefit from Ethereum’s programmability, and take full advantage of participation in the growing ecosystem of decentralized applications, from Compound to Maker, from Matcha to Uniswap. We look forward to wrapping more assets and bridging more layer one protocols with Ethereum in the future. Read more in Forbes, Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Crowdfund Insider, and Decrypt.

Obtained SOC 1 Type 1 Attestation Report

Widely recognized as a marker of excellence in financial services, and serving as a third party attestation that the controls a company has in place to support its financial reporting and operating are up to par, the Soc 1 Type 1 Attestation report is an important milestone for any financial services company seeking legitimacy in the eyes of institutions. This year, we’re proud to report that, after undergoing rigorous scrutiny under independent, third party audit but Ernst & Young, Anchorage obtained its SOC 1 Type 1 Attestation Report. We look forward to working with EY in the future to complete SOC 2 Type 2 evaluations at a regular cadence. Read more in Coindesk and Modern Consensus.

Applied for a National Trust Charter

On the heels of OCC interpretive letter #1170, interest in digital assets on the part of traditional financial players has surged. But what many banks are realizing is that there is no simple analogue to crypto in traditional finance. As such, they’re seeking out sub-custody arrangements with partners like Anchorage, who have made our business around the highly technical, highly sensitive work of securing private keys. To better serve this class of client, Anchorage applied to convert our existing South Dakota trust charter to a national trust charter with the OCC. Being granted such a charter would make Anchorage the first digital asset bank regulated at the national level, on the same regulatory footing as other banks. We anticipate interest in digital assets on the part of banks to only increase, and look forward to partnering with traditional financial players to bring white glove service and the best in modern security engineering to banking customers. Read more in Coindesk and Politico.

Kept the (Virtual) Public Conversation Around Institutional Crypto Moving

In terms of events this year, we missed seeing everyone in person. We always appreciate the opportunity to share ideas with other thought leaders in the space. Despite the distance, we were privileged to take part in a number of virtual events this year, including Messari Mainnet, Real Vision’s inaugural Crypto Gathering, Coindesk’s Consensus: Distributed and Invest: Ethereum Economy, and Liquidity2020. Beyond “stage” appearances, we were glad to keep the public conversation around institutional crypto going through a number of different outlets. We put on our own series of trading webinars, and hosted our first slate of Symposium panels on the future of CBDCs, crypto trader tech, and blockchain securities and the OCC. We also joined the conversation on Nasdaq Trade Talks, Bloomberg TV, Untold Stories, Bank on It, The Pomp Podcast, and many others.

Thank you to our clients, partners, investors, and to our extraordinary team for making all of this possible, in spite of everything. 2020 has been a year like none other. We look forward to a better, brighter, and fuller 2021.