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According to The Information, citing informed sources on Friday, Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered digital asset bank in the United States, has laid off 17% of its workforce. CEO Nathan McCauley informed employees of this decision earlier this week. Anchorage was valued at $4.2 billion earlier this year, and as of February, the global workforce was approximately 400 people, meaning this layoff affects about 68 positions.The Information attributes this layoff to the ongoing downturn in the cryptocurrency market that has lasted for a year. Bitcoin briefly rose above $87,000 on Friday but remains far below the peak of $126,000 reached in October last year.At the time of the layoffs, Anchorage is continuing to expand its presence in the regulated U.S. cryptocurrency industry. The company became the first cryptocurrency firm to obtain a national trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2021 and has since developed into a major cryptocurrency custodian. Recently, its business has expanded into the stablecoin issuance sector, including participation in Tether's newly launched U.S. stablecoin USAT; earlier this year, the company also received a strategic investment of $100 million from Tether.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin futures open interest has risen above $50 billion for the first time this year.David Lawant, Head of Research at Anchorage Digital, stated that this is not a warning signal of excessive leverage, but rather a reflection of market vitality, noting that the increase in spot trading volume and the thinning order book point to an early stage of recovery in the Bitcoin market.In his analysis, Lawant introduced the liquidity absorption ratio and explained how to identify shifts in Bitcoin market mechanisms. He mentioned the Bitcoin options market, which is approximately $60 billion in size, and the volatility curve, explaining why short-term Bitcoin volatility remains elevated through 2026, as well as what information options data can provide that prices themselves cannot reflect.He also shared Anchorage's experience with backtesting 37,000 covered call options and discussed how ETFs and treasury companies are changing the price discovery process for Bitcoin.

The lending agreement indicates that Spark has allocated $210 million in loans to institutions collateralized by Bitcoin, with the related Bitcoin held by the digital asset custodian Anchorage Digital. Institutions can borrow USDC while the pledged assets remain with a qualified custodian.Spark provides the loan funds, and Anchorage Digital manages the collateral through the Atlas platform. Atlas is its automated network that offers round-the-clock margin monitoring, settlement, and third-party services within a regulated custody framework.

The cryptocurrency venture capital firm Hashed has anchored a new digital asset private credit fund with a target size of $300 million. The fund was founded by Abu Dhabi investor and Further Ventures co-founder Mohamed Hamdy, and is managed by Thoro Capital Management, where he serves as managing partner.Thoro will lend directly to digital asset institutions in US dollars settled through stablecoins, with Hashed acting as the primary investor in the fund. Hashed stated that the new fund aims to address key financing bottlenecks in the institutional digital asset space—traditional banks are constrained by regulatory capital requirements, while existing crypto lenders underwrite based on asset collateral, which forces even profitable and audited market infrastructure companies to rely on expensive, short-term secured borrowing.The fund adopts a "contract-based" underwriting approach, assessing borrowers' financial conditions, cash flows, and management performance. Hashed noted that tokenized private credit has become the largest real-world asset (RWA) category by cumulative on-chain lending, with total loans exceeding $14 billion, while the traditional private credit market exceeds $30 trillion. Previously, Hashed obtained a financial services license issued by the Abu Dhabi Global Market and signed a memorandum of understanding with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office last week.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform stating that Spaces has launched "Trust Anchor," allowing applications to directly verify human-readable identities based on Bitcoin without relying on centralized servers.Users can obtain a single Trust ID and scan or paste it into Spaces-compatible applications to verify identity identifiers like alice@bitcoin based on the locally verified Spaces protocol status. The Trust ID is generated from the Bitcoin block header chain and the accumulated status of Spaces; the Veritas application on macOS can generate this ID without the need to run a full Bitcoin node, and users can also connect their own nodes or generate the same Trust ID through the Spaces client.This solution aims to use Bitcoin as the foundation for a decentralized certificate authority, enabling applications to authenticate identities without trusting company servers.

The first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., began offering xU3O8 custody services for institutional clients on September 16, 2026. This token is backed by physical uranium concentrate yellowcake, with the related uranium materials stored at Cameco facilities and held in beneficial ownership by a UK trust structure.xU3O8 is issued by Uranium.io, with the UK regulator Archax acting as the trustee, and the underlying assets are mapped through the Etherlink network. Cameco is responsible for storing physical uranium in certified facilities and regularly publishes the results of reserve proof audits. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) regulates Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., allowing its clients to include xU3O8 in isolation and bankruptcy-remote accounts similar to those for Bitcoin and cash equivalents. Currently, the unit price of xU3O8 is approximately $5.66, with a total market capitalization of about $9 million.

Anchorage Digital expands its commodity trust services, officially providing custody for tokenized uranium, marking the first time a federally chartered crypto bank in the United States has ventured into the custody of non-precious metal commodities.

According to sources, Anthropic is in talks to bring in NVIDIA as its anchor investor for its IPO, which is expected to be the largest in history.It is reported that NVIDIA is considering investing up to $10 billion in this IPO.

Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, has partnered with the stablecoin protocol Frgmnt to provide institutional clients access to fUSD and sfUSD tokens through its custody platform. Institutional clients can hold, mint, redeem, stake, and unstake fUSD without setting up separate custody arrangements.Frgmnt is a stablecoin protocol built on the Base network, issuing fUSD collateralized by USDC, with collateral assets deployed in on-chain lending markets. Users can stake fUSD for sfUSD to earn yields generated by the underlying strategies of the protocol. According to DeFiLlama data, the protocol has approximately $100,000 locked and is currently in a capped invitation-only testing phase, with plans to open public access and increase deposit limits on September 15. As of September 4, the annualized yield for sfUSD is approximately 13.32%.Anchorage Digital Bank is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and its parent company, Anchorage Digital, reached a valuation of $4.2 billion after receiving a $100 million investment from Tether in February. Previously, Tether had commissioned Anchorage to issue the stablecoin USAt for the U.S. market in January, and Anchorage has also collaborated with Grupo Salinas, Marinade Finance, and others to expand stablecoin payment and staking services.

a16z partner Sarah Wang recently published an article pointing out that AI application layer products should not price based on tokens like the model layer, but rather on "recognizable work units." The article argues that token pricing anchors the value of application products to a unit whose cost is continuously declining, making it difficult for customers to predict context length, retrieval volume, or reasoning time, and improperly compares applications to raw computing power.The article suggests a tiered pricing model based on value levels: model layer priced by tokens; application layer priced by recognizable work units for customers (such as account research briefs, code modifications, completed queries), which can be encapsulated through Credits; and scenarios that are attributable and have clear value priced directly by results (such as resolved customer service conversations, qualified leads). The design of Credits should map to different levels of work difficulty to protect gross margins and distinguish "work value" from "delivery cost." The article uses Clay as an example, where its new pricing separates Data Credits (third-party data) from Actions (orchestrated work), only passing on costs for reasoning models with significant cost fluctuations without markup. The author believes that pricing anchored to value rather than computing cost allows customers to understand spending in relation to value, while also benefiting product providers in maintaining profit margins.

Tushar Jain, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, stated that despite the significant rise in BTC, STRC has not re-pegged due to its low dividend levels. STRC was promoted as a fixed income product but has experienced a significant drawdown of about 30%.Tushar Jain pointed out that if investors need to bear such a level of drawdown risk, the yield of STRC must be significantly increased to provide adequate compensation for the aforementioned risk.

According to The Block, Standard Chartered Bank's subsidiary Anchorpoint officially launched the first phase of the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP on Wednesday, opening test access to institutional distributors and professional investors.Anchorpoint was jointly established by Standard Chartered Bank, HKT, and Animoca Brands, and received a stablecoin issuance license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in April this year, making it one of the first licensed institutions.

According to official news, the fintech and asset tokenization company Anchored Finance announced the launch of three tokenized funds, with underlying strategies involving funds from asset management institutions such as Point72, Millennium, D. E. Shaw, and BlackRock.The first batch of products includes the Anchored Diversified Hedge Fund (aDHF), Anchored Liquid Strategy Fund (aLSF), and Anchored AI Strategy Fund (aAIF), providing on-chain alternative asset allocation channels for qualified investors.Anchored Finance stated that this is the first time such traditional hedge fund portfolios have been introduced on-chain in the form of tokenized funds.

The blockchain rewards platform Bundle announced the completion of a $5.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, co-led by Ethereal Ventures and Further Ventures, both founded by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, with participation from institutions such as Nascent, GSR, Scenius Capital, Anchorage Digital, and Nuwa Capital.

According to the official blog of Ava Labs, the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) announced that through a local technology service provider, it has anchored national academic certification data to the Avalanche C-Chain, officially establishing a national electronic certification system.The system has already recorded over 15 million historical academic records on-chain, dating back to 1989, and nearly 1 million KCSE candidates' certificates for 2025 have now been exclusively issued through this platform.In the future, the system is expected to cover approximately 35 million verifiable records, encompassing various educational levels including primary school, secondary school, higher diplomas, and government teacher training certifications. The new system will significantly compress the verification time from the original weeks or even months to seconds, completely replacing the old processes that relied on manual reviews and traditional databases, effectively preventing fraud such as certificate forgery and counterfeit verification websites.KNEC CEO David Njengere stated that candidates can now securely access, download, and verify their KCSE certificates online without having to rely on physical certificates.

According to The Block, crypto bank Anchorage Digital announced that it has integrated Lido, the largest liquid staking protocol for Ethereum, providing institutional clients with direct access to its derivative asset wstETH.Institutional users can mint and burn wstETH, while earning Ethereum staking rewards, combined with the custody and governance compliance framework provided by Anchorage.

Binance announced a partnership with Anchorage Digital to further expand its third-party banking product network. By integrating Anchorage Digital's Atlas settlement platform, institutional clients can now trade on Binance while securely holding their assets in Anchorage Digital's independent qualified custody.It is reported that this is the first time the Atlas settlement platform has integrated with a cryptocurrency exchange. This partnership introduces the structure of "custody and trade execution separation" from traditional financial markets, allowing eligible institutions to use crypto assets, interest-bearing USD accounts, and specific tokenized real-world assets as collateral.

According to CoinDesk, Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto bank in the United States, announced the launch of a new platform to help banks issue and manage tokenized deposits.The platform provides banks with round-the-clock payment and settlement services through blockchain technology, without the need to replace existing core systems. The platform operates in a parallel layer, with Anchorage responsible for blockchain infrastructure, wallet management, and smart contract technology, while banks continue to maintain customer relationships and deposit custody.Currently, several large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America, also plan to jointly establish a tokenized deposit network in the first half of 2027.