Anchorage Digital lays off about 17% of staff as sector-wide cost pressures bite

Anchorage Digital is cutting about 17% of its workforce, pointing to cost pressures it says are hitting the entire sector.

What we know about the cuts

The layoffs affect roughly one in six employees at the digital asset platform. The company tied the decision to cost pressures across the industry rather than to any single event or business line.

The roughly 17% figure is the key number here. No exact headcount has been attached to it.

The move is being described as part of a broader restructuring. Which teams are affected, and whether any business units are being wound down, has not been laid out.

This has happened before

Anchorage has walked this road once already. On March 14, 2023, the company let go of approximately 75 employees, or about 20% of its staff at the time.

Those 2023 cuts followed a strategic review that ran for several months. The outcome was a sharper focus on institutional custody and regulated services, which remain the core of the business.

Back then, the company cited three culprits. Those were regulatory uncertainty in the US, a difficult macroeconomic backdrop, and volatility in crypto markets.

The 2023 round landed during a rough stretch for crypto-friendly banking. Silvergate, Signature, and SVB all shut down around the same period.

Officials at Anchorage said their cuts were not caused by those bank failures. Instead, they framed the layoffs as a response to broader challenges facing crypto firms.

There was a silver lining in that earlier announcement. Client assets under custody had hit record levels even as the company shed staff.

Its banking arm, Anchorage Digital Bank N.A., was not affected by the 2023 reductions. Whether the bank is touched by the latest round has not been specified.

A bank charter few others have

Anchorage occupies an unusual spot in crypto. It is the only federally chartered, crypto-focused national trust bank in the US.

It received that charter in January 2021. Beyond the federal charter, the company holds regulatory licenses in multiple jurisdictions, including Singapore and New York.

In February 2026, an investment from Tether lifted Anchorage Digital’s valuation to $4.2 billion.

What this means for the industry and its clients

Anchorage did not point to a lost client, a regulatory setback, or a failed product. It pointed to the sector.

The 2023 precedent offers some context on continuity. Last time, Anchorage cut a larger share of staff and still reported record client assets under custody.

Key signals to track in the coming months include any update on assets under custody, details on which teams were affected, and whether the banking subsidiary’s operations change.