U.S. Banking Regulator OCC Lifts Enforcement Order From Anchorage Digital

Anchorage Digital has moved out from under its U.S. banking regulator's order that it institute a compliance program to protect against money-laundering abuses, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announcing the removal of the cease-and-desist order originally issued in 2022.

"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," it said in the termination announced on Thursday.

Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley, who has emerged as a high-profile representative of crypto interests in Washington, framed the enforcement action as regulatory "feedback" in celebrating its removal.

"We received — and have now resolved — feedback from regulators as we set the standard for federally chartered custody of digital assets," he said in a Thursday missive on the company's website, in which he called Anchorage Digital "the world’s most regulated digital asset bank."

The OCC and other U.S. banking regulators have, since the start of President Donald Trump's second administration, sought to relax constraints on crypto industry businesses. New OCC chief Jonathan Gould, who was sworn in last month, was an agency veteran who has also worked in the private sector as chief legal officer for Bitfury.

Anchorage Digital was the first crypto bank to win a full-fledged banking charter from the agency that regulates national banks, and after it did so, that window had closed for a time as the regulators during President Joe Biden's tenure viewed the industry with more suspicion.

More recently, digital assets issuers including Circle, Ripple and Paxos have again started applying to the OCC to start the bank-charter process.