Tether (USDT)-Backed Anchorage Digital Cuts 17% of Staff, About 68 Jobs

Anchorage Digital Confirms 17% Cut

Anchorage Digital, the first digital asset bank to hold a US federal charter, has completed a workforce reduction covering 17% of its staff. Chief Executive Nathan McCauley notified every employee of the decision during the past week, and the company confirmed the move as of October 3. Set against a headcount of roughly 400 employees recorded in February, the cut removes about 68 positions. The bank stated that the reduction is not confined to any single business line or individual matter, and it framed the decision around softer performance across the digital asset market and a requirement to bring operating expenses down. The Tether (USDT) price has held its dollar peg throughout the period, which places the restructuring firmly in the category of institutional cost management rather than a stress event for the token itself. Anchorage sits in a specific corner of the industry, operating at the junction of digital assets and TradFi under a federal banking license, and its staffing decisions carry weight as a read on how regulated crypto finance firms absorb a prolonged downturn. What the company has not disclosed is just as concrete: no severance terms, no list of affected departments, and no figure for the headcount that remains once the reduction is executed. McCauley stays in his role, and no executive departure accompanied the announcement. The bank has also not said whether the 17% represents the full extent of the restructuring or whether further steps could follow, so the final size of the workforce stays open. Prior to the notice, the bank had kept expanding its regulated infrastructure footprint, which frames the reduction as a course correction rather than a retreat from the charter model. Analysts tracking the sector read the move as confirmation that the industry-wide push for leaner staffing has reached firms holding federal charters. The confirmed facts remain the percentage, the all-staff notice and the cost rationale.

Tether's $100M Stake and 2023 Precedent

The reduction lands while the bank's balance sheet still reflects a period of aggressive expansion. In February, Tether, the issuer of the largest dollar stablecoin, put $100 million into Anchorage Digital as a strategic equity investment, a round that valued the company at $4.2 billion. Since then, Anchorage has widened its regulated infrastructure work along two lines: it supports the issuance of Tether's new stablecoin, USAT, and it provides custody for tokenized uranium, an early case of Real-World Assets held under a federally chartered custodian. Secure storage is the bank's core product, built on cold wallet infrastructure for institutional clients, and that business depends directly on how much capital institutions choose to leave in regulated custody. Tether has kept deploying capital elsewhere in the same stretch, leading a $1.4 billion funding round for the humanoid robot developer NEURA Robotics and backing Utexo's RGB rollout to issue USDT on Bitcoin. The bank did not say how the February investment or the USAT work factors into the new cost structure, and no revision to those programs was announced. The current cut is also not the bank's first. In March 2023, the company laid off 75 people, about 20% of its staff at the time, as the aftermath of the crypto winter compressed revenue across custody and lending. That round came straight out of the 2022 failures; this one lands in a different market, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading near $85K after a recovery phase, yet the cost pressure has reached institution-focused infrastructure firms all the same. The pattern across both reductions is consistent: a federally chartered bank, even one carrying a $4.2 billion valuation from its most recent raise, is compressing payrolls to match a market where custody and trading revenue has stayed below the levels that funded its expansion.

Cost Discipline Reaches Federal-Charter Banks

COINOTAG's reading starts from the load-bearing record, the company's own all-staff announcement, which states the 17% figure, the company-wide scope and the operating-cost rationale, and which stops short of any commitment on severance or on the headcount that remains. The reduction itself is closed: the notice went out this week and the 17% figure is set. What the record does not contain is a revised total workforce figure, so the bank's next headcount disclosure is the datum that completes this event. Until then, the industry-wide staffing efficiency trend now includes the most regulated end of the custody market.