OCC Ends Consent Order Against Anchorage Digital After More Than Three Years

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on Thursday lifted its consent order against Anchorage Digital Bank, bringing an end to more than three years of heightened regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency-focused institution.

Anchorage Digital had spent nearly three-quarters of its existence as a chartered national trust bank under the consent order, which was imposed in 2022 over shortcomings tied to its anti-money laundering program. At the time, the OCC alleged that the bank had “failed to adopt and implement compliance measures that adequately covered Bank Secrecy Act/AML program requirements.” The regulator said Anchorage Digital was lacking sufficient internal controls for customer due diligence and did not have adequate procedures for tracking suspicious activity.

In its latest decision, the OCC stated, “the OCC believes that the safety and soundness of the Bank and its compliance with laws and regulations does not require the continued existence of the Order.”

Following the termination of the order, Anchorage Digital co-founder and chief executive officer Nathan McCauley released a letter outlining the firm’s efforts to strengthen its compliance framework. He noted that the 1,681 days between receiving a national trust bank charter and having the consent order removed “are not defined by a single regulatory action, but rather by the hundreds of thousands of man-hours in risk and regulatory specialization, tens of millions of dollars in compliance infrastructure investment, hundreds of dedicated meetings with our regulator, dozens of expert hires, and annual OCC exams — all in service of the nation’s first-of-its-kind federal banking charter.”

“With our consent order lifted, we’ve proven definitively that crypto and federal oversight are not mutually exclusive — and can in fact be stronger working in tandem,” McCauley wrote.

Anchorage Digital remains the only cryptocurrency firm to hold a national trust bank charter. However, that could change in the months ahead, as Paxos, Fidelity Digital Assets, Ripple and Circle have also submitted applications to secure the same designation, seeking to benefit from the crypto-friendly approach initiated under the Trump administration.

Since the shift in political leadership in January, the OCC and other regulators have reversed course on digital assets. Along with the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the OCC has rolled back Biden-era guidance on banks’ involvement in cryptocurrency. That includes the rescinding of a 2023 joint statement that had cautioned institutions over crypto’s “key risks.”

By fLEXI tEAM