Anchorage Digital, the federally chartered U.S. digital-asset bank and crypto custodian, has cut 17% of its workforce as a prolonged downturn in cryptocurrency markets puts sustained pressure on companies across the industry. The layoffs mark the second major staff reduction in the company's history.

Chief Executive Nathan McCauley informed employees of the layoffs this week, according to a report by The Information, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Anchorage had approximately 400 employees across its global operations as of February 2026. Based on that figure, the newly announced reduction would amount to roughly 68 positions if the company's headcount had remained at that level. To date, Anchorage has not publicly disclosed the exact number of employees affected.

Four years ago, the company undertook a similar workforce reduction that saw 20% of its staff laid off, a move that came despite Anchorage having secured $350 million in Series D funding in 2021. At the time of those earlier cuts, Anchorage Digital was the sole federally chartered crypto bank in the United States.

The latest cuts come despite Anchorage continuing to expand its institutional digital-asset business. The company was the first crypto firm to receive a national trust charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in 2021 — the federal charter that underpins its status as a regulated digital-asset bank — and it has since developed a major custody operation serving institutional clients. Custody, the safeguarding of customers' digital assets, is a foundational service through which institutions hold cryptocurrency, and it sits at the core of Anchorage's federally chartered banking model. The OCC is the U.S. regulator responsible for chartering and supervising national banks.

Anchorage's growth in the years since has been reflected in its valuation. The company was valued at about $4.2 billion in early 2026, up from $3 billion in 2021, after stablecoin issuer Tether invested $100 million in the firm. Anchorage has also expanded into stablecoin infrastructure, a business line that includes serving as the issuer of Tether's U.S.-focused USAT stablecoin.

The cuts add to a broader stretch of retrenchment across the digital-asset sector, where several prominent firms have wound down or scaled back operations in recent years. The workforce reduction highlights the pressure facing crypto companies even as institutional adoption and regulated digital-asset infrastructure continue to expand. That Anchorage is trimming staff while its valuation has risen to roughly $4.2 billion and its stablecoin-infrastructure business expands underscores how the sector's prolonged downturn is reaching even firms with growing institutional franchises.