Crypto custodian Anchorage Digital acquires Securitize’s RIA unit

Digital assets custodian Anchorage Digital is making a push into the RIA market through its new acquisition of Securitize For Advisors, which works with registered investment advisors to provide clients with access to Bitcoin and other digital assets. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. 

The deal was struck with tokenization firm Securitize, which is an SEC-registered broker-dealer with $4 billion in assets under management and offers tokenized funds through its partnerships with institutions such as Hamilton Lane, BlackRock, and Apollo. The firm’s RIA unit, Securitize For Advisors, launched in 2021 and had an existing custody partnership with Anchorage Digital.

“RIAs are driving one of the most important waves of crypto adoption. By bringing together Anchorage Digital’s federally regulated custody platform with SFA’s technology and expertise, we’re building the premier solution for wealth managers and their clients,” said Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, which is federally regulated since it received a U.S. trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2021.

“Spot exposure to large-cap digital assets is often the entry point, with Bitcoin and Ethereum typically serving as the first allocations,” McCauley told InvestmentNews. “As advisors and their clients become more comfortable with that, exposure is increasingly expanding beyond BTC and ETH into other assets. This year we’ve seen client interest in other digital assets, like XRP.”

Anchorage Digital’s acquisition to deepen its RIA ties comes as Wall Street institutions are increasing their cryptocurrency offerings, with recent moves from Vanguard, Bank of America, and RIA custodian giant Schwab saying it plans to offer spot crypto trading in the first half of 2026. Schwab is also planning to offer digital assets custody to advisors, famed financial advisor Ric Edelman told InvestmentNews earlier this year.

“Schwab is very aggressively developing its platform to trade and custody digital assets, and that is going to force all the other firms that compete with Schwab to do the same thing,” said Edelman, who now leads the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals.

The number of assets held at Securitize For Advisors or the number of active RIAs on the platform were not shared. A company press release notes that in the past 12 months, SFA has grown more than 4,500% to reach an all-time high in net new deposits and assets under management.

“We have many clients who use Anchorage Digital as a standalone custodian, some who use multiple,” McCauley said. In addition to custody, Anchorage Digital offers trading, staking, governance, settlement, stablecoin issuance, and security infrastructure for digital assets.

"For Securitize, this move allows us to double down on our mission of tokenizing capital markets while ensuring the RIA offering we built continues to thrive," Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said in a statement.

Anchorage Digital raised $350 million in a 2021 Series D funding round led by KKR. Its other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management and Visa.

"By integrating SFA technology into the Anchorage Digital platform, we’re able to offer greater flexibility in how advisors engage, whether they want a white-labeled experience or to use the technology independently within their existing workflows," added McCauley. "This is a meaningful acquisition for Anchorage Digital. It reflects our confidence in both the platform we are acquiring and the broader opportunities in the wealth management market."