USAT Stablecoin Issuer Anchorage Digital Cuts 17% of Workforce

Anchorage Digital Cuts About 68 Roles

Anchorage Digital, the federally chartered crypto bank that issues Tether's USAT stablecoin, has reportedly reduced its workforce by 17% as a prolonged bear market weighs on the sector. Chief Executive Nathan McCauley informed employees of the cuts during the current week, according to people familiar with the matter, and the company had not publicly confirmed the figure at the time of writing. McCauley told US lawmakers in February that Anchorage employed roughly 400 people worldwide, so a 17% reduction would translate to about 68 positions if the headcount has stayed near that level. Because that testimony covered employees globally, the calculation describes a possible company-wide reduction rather than a confirmed number of US job losses.

The downsizing is notable for a bank that secured a $4.2 billion valuation earlier this year. It also lands against a difficult market backdrop. The Bitcoin (BTC) price briefly climbed back above $87,000 on Friday, yet the asset remains far below the $126,000 peak it set in October 2025, and our live monitoring places the market near $84,400 as of Friday afternoon. A drawdown of that scale has compressed revenue at custody desks and crypto exchanges throughout the year, and the staff cut is the clearest sign yet that even a federally regulated institution is adjusting to it.

What separates this case from the failures of earlier cycles is the timing: Anchorage trimmed headcount while its product line was expanding, not shrinking.

Tether's $100 Million Stake in USAT

The layoffs arrive months after Anchorage locked in fresh capital. Tether announced a $100 million strategic equity investment in the bank on Feb. 5, describing it as a deepening of a relationship that already covered banking and compliance work for Tether's US-focused token. That token, USAT, entered circulation on Jan. 27 as a dollar-backed product built for the federal stablecoin framework established under the GENIUS Act, with Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A. serving as its legal issuer. Tether named Cantor Fitzgerald as reserve custodian and staged the rollout across major platforms including Bybit, Crypto.com, Kraken, OKX and MoonPay, while disclosing that USAT is not legal tender and carries no FDIC or SIPC insurance. Anchorage publishes monthly reserve attestations for the token, and the first January report recorded 17.5 million redeemable tokens outstanding against roughly $17.6 million in supporting reserves. The issuance roster has kept widening through the downturn. In September, Anchorage selected LayerZero to provide cross-chain infrastructure for stablecoins issued through its banking platform, naming USAT as the first token on the arrangement; LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token standard lets an issuer maintain a unified supply across networks while keeping contract control. Anchorage's portfolio also lists Western Union's USDPT, OSL Group's USDGO and Falcon Finance's fUSD. A separate September custody expansion added seven assets on the Tezos layer 2 network Etherlink, including tokenized uranium through xU3O8, wrapped Ether and several stablecoins, all held in segregated accounts under US bank supervision. Unlike a yield-bearing stablecoin, USAT pays holders nothing, so its growth rests on distribution partners rather than on rates.

National Trust Charter Under Strain

The cuts land in a sector-wide contraction. Tracking by CryptoJobsList counts at least 7,411 crypto job losses across 60 companies in 2026, the largest announced by Block in February at 4,000 roles, while Tiger Research reports new job postings on leading crypto hiring platforms down roughly 80% year over year as of January. The roles that survive skew toward infrastructure: of 2,932 openings monitored in the first half of 2026, engineering made up 34.1%, compliance and legal 10.4%, and stablecoins and payments 13.4%. Institutional demand has not followed headcount downward. EY's 2026 survey found 73% of respondents plan to expand digital asset investments, and in June Binance added Anchorage to its tri-party banking network, letting institutions hold collateral under regulated custody while trading.

The reduction is not Anchorage's first. In 2023 the bank cut 20% of its staff, and McCauley later attributed that decision in part to being cut off from banking partners. The new cuts also place Anchorage among a long list of crypto employers trimming in 2026: Gemini shrank its workforce by about 30%, Crypto.com cut 12% in March, Coinbase announced roughly 700 role eliminations, or 14% of staff, in May, Dune laid off 25% of its team the same month, Luno trimmed 20% in July, and Bitwise cut about 14% in August, while BitMEX, the Lisk blockchain and the Ethereum layer-2 network Blast shut down entirely. Outside crypto, US tech companies announced 10,799 job cuts in September, up 77% from August, with 165,925 cuts announced so far in 2026.

(as of 23:14 UTC) COINOTAG's reading is that the layoffs test how far a regulatory franchise can offset a market cycle. The OCC approval in January 2021 made Anchorage the first crypto company to operate as a national trust bank, with an enforceable operating agreement covering capital, liquidity and risk management; the agency's February 2026 records list the termination of that original agreement. A bank that has since taken Tether's investment, issued USAT and expanded institutional custody is now cutting staff to defend its cost base, evidence that the downturn is pressuring even the most credentialed custodians in the market.