BREAKING: Anchorage Digital Becomes First Federally Chartered US Bank to Custody Tron (TRX) Crypto

In a landmark move for institutional crypto adoption, Anchorage Digital has become the first federally chartered U.S. crypto bank to offer custody and staking for the Tron (TRX) network, bringing the $84 billion USDT ecosystem inside the U.S. regulatory perimeter for the first time. This represents a seismic shift in legitimacy, moving beyond mere exchange listings to full federal banking-grade custody, with profound implications for compliance, counterparty risk, and institutional market signals.

What Anchorage Bank Is Actually Building

The initial launch supports TRX custody on Anchorage’s core regulated platform and itsself-custody institutional wallet. TRC-20 token support and native TRX staking roll out in phases, a staged structure that allows regulatory validation at each step rather than a single broad deployment.

Anchorage Digital is your new access point to the @trondao ecosystem.$TRX custody is now live with support for TRC-20 assets and native TRX staking on the way. pic.twitter.com/f4xlKwmcir

TRC-20 support is the operationally significant layer. It means institutions will be able to hold and manage Tron-based stablecoins—including theUSDT supply sitting on Tron—directly within a federally regulated custody account. That is the use case that matters to institutional treasury desks.

Anchorage co-founder Nathan McCauley framed the move as infrastructure-driven: “As TRON expands its presence in the U.S., institutions need trusted infrastructure to securely custody assets and participate in the network. By supporting TRON on Anchorage Digital’s regulated platform, we’re helping bring one of crypto’s largest ecosystems into an institutional framework.”

The federal charter distinction matters here. Anchorage holds a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—the same regulatory body that oversees JPMorgan and Citibank. State-chartered custodians operate under a patchwork of state regimes. A federally chartered institution conducting AML/BSA due diligence on Tron and clearing it for custody sets a compliance benchmark that state-level operators and foreign custodians cannot replicate by definition.

Tron’s network scale justifies the scrutiny. The chain has recorded overtotal user accounts and more thantotal transactions. It is not a niche protocol. It is core stablecoin infrastructure that U.S. institutions have been structurally locked out of engaging with compliantly—until now.

Tron Crypto Regulatory Clearance as a Market Structure Event

The background context is critical. Coinbase delisted TRX in 2023 under regulatory pressure. The SEC pursued securities violations against Sun and the Tron Foundation, claims dismissed only earlier this month, with Rainberry, the corporate parent of Sun’s BitTorrent network, paying a $10 million fine over undisclosed BTT token promotions.

The SEC case officially ended yesterday. The judge approved and signed the Final Judgment. The Tron Foundation is fully dismissed on all claims with prejudice. Chapter closed. https://t.co/5zKcAio0ui

That legal overhang suppressed U.S. institutional engagement with Tron for years. Its removal, combined with Anchorage’s federal-level due diligence clearance, reopens the market.

Anchorage’s federal imprimatur gives other U.S.-regulated entities—prime brokers, custodians, asset managers, a compliance reference point.

When America’s only federally chartered crypto bank conducts AML/BSA diligence on a network and approves it for custody, that functions as a de facto institutional clearinghouse signal.

Expect other regulated venues to accelerate their own Tron evaluations.