Anchorage lacks deposit and lending
Erebor
The key limit is that Anchorage is built more like regulated crypto plumbing than a full commercial bank. Its core products are custody, staking, settlement, collateral management, and stablecoin issuance, which makes it strong where institutions need a secure place to hold assets and move them on-chain. But the trust bank structure that supports those services generally does not include mainstream insured operating accounts, checkable deposits, or commercial lending, so it is not naturally set up to become a startup’s primary treasury and credit relationship.
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OCC guidance on national trust banks is explicit that these institutions usually operate in a fiduciary capacity, and generally do not take deposits or make commercial loans. That matters because the missing products are exactly the everyday banking tools a startup uses for payroll, cash management, and working capital.
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Anchorage’s product surface shows where it is strongest. The bank markets custody, staking, settlement, stablecoin issuance, and Atlas collateral workflows, where a customer posts digital assets, monitors loan to value, meets margin calls, and settles transactions. That is infrastructure for asset movement, not relationship banking.
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This creates a natural market split. A crypto native institution can use Anchorage for safekeeping and on-chain operations, then keep fiat cash and borrowing with a separate commercial bank. An integrated entrant can try to collapse those two relationships into one account stack and one underwriting relationship.
The market is moving toward a contest between specialist trust banks and integrated commercial banks with crypto capabilities. If digital asset firms keep wanting one provider for custody, insured cash, payments, and credit, the advantage shifts toward institutions that can bundle all four. If the market stays comfortable separating crypto infrastructure from everyday banking, Anchorage remains well positioned at the infrastructure layer.